Mid-Size Firm Cuts Legal Research Turnaround by 75%
A 45-lawyer national firm with offices in Sydney and Melbourne uses Quillio for internal legal research memos — cutting research turnaround from a 3-day standard to under 4 hours for routine questions. Partners now get a first-draft research memo the same day they ask, across competition law, commercial litigation, and regulatory matters.
What they were trying to solve
Partners were raising research questions on live matters and waiting 2-3 days for a mid-level associate to produce a memo. The associate then spent 6-8 hours researching, often duplicating work that had been done on a similar question in a different practice group a month earlier. The firm had a research precedent library, but it was under-used because searching it was slow.
Why Quillio
Quillio was configured with AU case law and legislation access, the firm's internal precedent memo library (indexed with access controls), and standard research memo templates. Associates now run the research question through Quillio, get a first-draft memo in minutes, and spend their time on verification and refinement.
Implementation
The firm rolled Quillio out to the litigation practice first, benchmarked output against 15 historical research memos, then extended to the commercial and regulatory groups over 4 weeks.
Measurable outcomes
For routine case law and legislation questions
From raw question to reviewed first-draft memo
Internal memos surfaced by Quillio are now reused instead of re-researched
Partners can now respond to client research questions within the day
Billing rate maintained while throughput increased — more matters, same margin
"Our associates were doing the same research other associates in other offices had already done. Quillio surfaces our own precedent memos before sending them back to Westlaw, which is what we'd always wanted — we just couldn't get the internal library to work that way before."
How it works in practice
Internal legal research memo drafting, precedent library search, competition law analysis, and commercial litigation research across both offices.
What they avoided
Hiring a dedicated knowledge management lawyer or commissioning an expensive custom precedent-library rebuild that the firm had previously scoped and shelved.
Case study FAQs
Can Quillio access our internal precedent library?
Yes — Quillio integrates with the firm's document management system (iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint) under the firm's existing access controls, so associates only surface memos they are cleared to see.
What about confidential client matters in the memos?
All internal documents stay on Australian-hosted infrastructure under the firm's tenancy. Nothing is used for external model training and access is logged matter-by-matter.
Is it accurate enough for partner-level work?
Quillio produces a first draft with case citations the associate verifies. The firm's protocol is that no memo goes to a partner without associate verification, which is the same standard as before Quillio.
Does it cover all Australian jurisdictions?
Yes — federal and state/territory legislation and case law across all AU jurisdictions, updated weekly.
How long did rollout take across two offices?
Four weeks to the full 45-lawyer bench, starting with the litigation group in Sydney and extending to commercial and regulatory in both offices.
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