Sydney Accounting Firm Cuts Legal Referral Time 70%
A mid-tier Sydney accounting firm with 45 partners uses Quillio to triage legal queries from its accounting partners before referring to external solicitors. The 3-person in-house legal team reduced average referral turnaround from 5 business days to 1.5 days and cut external legal spend by 38% in the first year by resolving straightforward queries internally.
What they were trying to solve
Accounting partners frequently encountered legal questions during tax structuring, trust administration, and commercial advisory work. The small in-house team was overwhelmed — 60% of queries sat in the queue for 3+ days. Partners would either wait or go directly to external solicitors at full commercial rates, bypassing the in-house team entirely. The firm estimated $420K in unnecessary external legal spend annually on matters the in-house team could have handled.
Why Quillio
Quillio sits at the intake point for all partner legal queries. It analyses the query against the Tax Administration Act 1953 (Cth), Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), and relevant trust law, produces a preliminary assessment with risk rating, and recommends whether the matter can be handled in-house or needs external referral. For straightforward queries — like confirming trustee obligations under a standard discretionary trust deed or checking Part IVA anti-avoidance exposure — Quillio drafts the response memo for lawyer review.
Implementation
The firm ran a 4-week pilot where the in-house team processed 80 historical queries through Quillio and compared outputs against the original advice. After achieving 94% alignment, they deployed Quillio as the first-pass triage for all new queries. Partners now submit queries through a shared portal and receive an initial assessment within hours.
Measurable outcomes
Average time from partner query to initial legal response
Reduced from $420K to $260K annually by resolving simple queries in-house
Up from 40% — most straightforward matters no longer need external referral
Internal survey showed partners rated legal support significantly higher post-Quillio
Outstanding queries older than 3 days dropped from 60% to 12%
"Our accounting partners used to bypass us entirely because we were too slow. Now they come to us first because they get a proper answer the same day — and we only escalate the genuinely complex stuff to external counsel."
How it works in practice
Legal query triage, Part IVA anti-avoidance assessment, trust deed review, commercial agreement first-pass analysis, and external referral recommendation with risk rating.
What they avoided
Hiring two additional in-house lawyers at $180K+ each, continuing to haemorrhage external legal spend on straightforward queries, or accepting multi-day response times that pushed partners to bypass the legal team.
Case study FAQs
Can Quillio handle tax-specific legal queries?
Yes — Quillio analyses queries against the Tax Administration Act 1953 (Cth), Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth), and relevant ATO rulings to produce preliminary assessments on matters like Part IVA exposure, trust distribution resolutions, and GST entity classification.
Does it replace external solicitors?
No — Quillio triages queries so the in-house team can resolve straightforward matters and refer only genuinely complex work externally. External solicitors handle the matters that need specialist expertise.
How does the risk rating work?
Quillio assigns a risk tier (low, medium, high) based on the legal complexity, dollar exposure, and regulatory sensitivity of the query. Low-risk matters get a draft response for lawyer sign-off; high-risk matters are flagged for immediate external referral.
Is it suitable for multi-disciplinary practices?
Yes — accounting firms, financial planning practices, and other professional services firms with embedded legal teams use Quillio for the same triage workflow.
Run the same pilot.
Accounting firms with in-house legal teams should trial Quillio on their last 20 partner queries and measure how many could have been resolved internally. Start a free trial.
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