Senior work, start to finish
Daegan Leachman is a senior associate in the commercial space, advising clients across technology, healthcare and digital assets, and working with many startup businesses. Her days are built on detail: reviewing and drafting long, intricate documents and agreements, managing transactions and negotiations, and advising on structuring and compliance. As she puts it, lots of reading — and then a lot more reading.
Her firm is deliberately different. There are no juniors and no paralegals; everyone is a senior associate, and every matter is handled beginning to end by the lawyer who owns it. Daegan values that, because it lets her promise clients quality work at every step. But it also means there is nobody to hand the routine tasks to. Every single step, from setting up the file through to completion, falls on her.
We're all senior associates, we handle all our work beginning to end. So every single step from setting up the file through to completion is on me, which I like because I can promise our clients quality work.
Daegan Leachman
When everything follows you
What Daegan wanted was room — room to do the deep, strategic thinking her clients deserved, and room for a life outside the law. What she had instead was admin that followed her everywhere. A lot of her time was being eaten by necessary but repetitive work: reviewing and comparing agreements, tracking changes, pulling out key clauses and obligations across documents. Important steps, all of them, but not the ones that demand deep legal judgment. With no paralegal or admin support, everything followed her, and she found it incredibly time consuming and, at times, exhausting.
The real cost was not just hours of work — it was time. When you are stretched that thin, even small inefficiencies add up, leaving less room for the bigger picture, professionally and personally. The pressure of heavy admin chipped away at her focus and her energy. Nobody, as she says, wants a stressed mum who has no time with her kids. That was the quiet price of doing it the old way — and it was being paid at home as much as at the desk.
When you're stretched, even small inefficiencies, they add up. Nobody wants a stressed mom and someone that doesn't have time with their kids.
Daegan Leachman
Proven wrong
Daegan was curious rather than dismissive — she loves tech and is genuinely open to it. But in commercial law accuracy really matters, and honestly, she was not sure AI could deliver the precision she needed. She assumed it might be too generic, or miss the nuance of the context-specific work she does. So she did not take it on faith. She took her time, took some baby steps, and waited to see the results before she trusted it.
The turning point came on a hard, real task: cross-referencing three lengthy, interrelated documents for consistency. That work would have cost her hours, probably sleepless nights, and even then the subtle variations and terminology differences are so easy to miss when you are tired and on your sixtieth page. That was the moment she saw how much accuracy AI could support, and how much time it could save. Quillio settled in beside her as a diligent assistant she could rely on — not a replacement for her judgment, but a smarter way to manage the load.
I had to cross reference like three really lengthy interrelated documents for consistency, and that would have taken me hours and to be honest, probably like sleepless nights as well.
Daegan Leachman
How she works now
Daegan's workflow is far more streamlined. She has Quillio take the time-consuming work off her desk — extracting key information and timeframes, flagging unusual terms, and cross-checking against her preferred precedents, wording and legislation. That lets her get to the core concept and the initial review of a document much faster, and identify the key issues far sooner.
With the repetitive admin handled, the bulk of her time now goes to the strategy, the negotiations and the client-facing advice — the work where the value actually adds up. And because something is checking over her work almost at all times, she is more confident in what she presents: not just her own review, but a second pass against the legislation and current terminology, catching the things a tired eye might miss across multi-document, high-page matters.
When you know how to use it, it really just supports you with your work and just streamlining the processes. It's been a real godsend.
Daegan Leachman
The load lifted
The change Daegan feels most is the one on her mind. Reviewing page after page across multiple matters and agreements, holding it all in your head, staying on top of every deadline — that is a huge mental load, on top of being a parent. Having the key obligations, timeframes and deadlines pulled out and set in front of her relieves a real weight of that cognitive load.
As a full-time mum, her hours are limited, and the change has given some balance back. She has been able to take on more matters, but also to streamline the work and log off a little earlier some evenings — time she spends with her family. Turnaround times are better and clients are happier, she says, with no compromise on quality; if anything, the quality has improved.
I can kind of relieve some of the mental load that I have because I've got it in writing in front of me or somebody else assisting me along the way.
Daegan Leachman
No going back
Asked whether she could ever return to the old manual way, Daegan does not hesitate: no. She thinks she would be burnt out and exhausted, and that a firm doing it the old way would fall behind. In her view AI is becoming infrastructure — the air we breathe, the water we drink — much like the internet and social media before it.
For her, the upside runs both ways: it powers you professionally and personally, and that is why she believes lawyers need to be versed in it. She is optimistic about where it is heading — a better standard of work delivered faster, an edge for her firm, and happier clients. A win for everyone.
I definitely couldn't. I do think that if I went back to the old way, I'd probably be burnt out and exhausted and I do think that you'd fall behind.
Daegan Leachman