What It Costs to Implement AI in a Professional Firm

The First Workflow costs $7,500, fixed. A full Implementation costs $25,000 to $75,000, fixed in writing once we agree on the scope. Keeping the systems tuned afterward costs $3,000 to $10,000 a month, and you can say no to that part. Those are our fees, and they are printed on our site because a buyer should not have to ask what something costs.

What follows explains what each fee covers, what pushes a price up or down, what is never in it, and what to ask when you are reading any proposal for this kind of work.

What does it cost to start with one AI workflow?

$7,500, and it does not move. For that fee we choose one job your people repeat all week, build a first draft of it into the email, documents or records you already use, write down what it does in plain English, and walk your people through it. A person approves anything before it leaves your business. It takes about three weeks.

If you decide to continue to Implementation within six months, the fee is credited in full. If you do not continue, the workflow is documented and runs in your own accounts, so you can keep using it without us.

What does a full AI implementation cost?

$25,000 to $75,000, fixed in writing once the scope is agreed, over six to twelve weeks. It builds the workflows you decide on, along with the intake, documents, approvals, reporting and secure portals around them. Your staff are trained, you receive an operating manual, and the workflows, prompts, configuration and documentation are yours.

Implementation starts from the AI readiness assessment, which we call the Diagnostic. It costs $10,000 to $20,000 and takes two to three weeks. It ends in a written report you can use whether or not you build anything with us, and if you go on to Implementation its fee is credited in full.

Why is Implementation a range and not one number?

Because two firms can ask for the same thing and need very different amounts of work. The range is the honest answer, and the fixed price comes after we have studied how your work actually runs.

A few things move the price. The first is how many workflows you want built. One job costs less than five. The second is how many places the work has to connect: an email inbox alone is simpler than an inbox, a document system, a billing tool and a client portal that all have to agree. The third is the state of your records. If the templates, client lists and files are in order, the build goes quickly. If they live in six folders and three people's heads, some of the time goes to tidying them first.

The fourth is how sensitive the material is. The more private the files, the more care goes into who can see what, and that care takes time. The fifth is how many people need to be trained, and how much approval your work needs before anything leaves the building.

What does it cost to keep an AI system running?

Operate costs $3,000 to $10,000 a month, depending on how many systems we look after and how much they change. Each month we check that every workflow still does what it was built to do and update it for new work and for changes in the tools underneath. Once a quarter the principal spends ninety minutes with you reading the systems against how your business looks now.

Operate is always optional. After Implementation, everything is documented and in your own accounts, and you can run it yourself. Some firms prefer to hand the watching to someone else, and some do not.

What is not included in the fee?

Our fee covers our work. It does not cover the subscriptions for the tools involved, or the usage charges from the companies that provide them. Those are billed to you directly by those companies, and we tell you what to expect before you sign. It also does not cover your own people's time, which is real: someone has to answer our questions and approve what the system drafts.

It also does not cover advice on what a law or professional rule requires of you. Whether your use of a particular tool meets your professional duties is a question for your own counsel, and we do not answer it.

What do published price guides say?

If you want a yardstick, other sellers publish their own. A pricing guide from Copilot Experts, dated August 2026, puts a fixed-fee readiness assessment at $10,000 to $25,000. A guide from Main & Machine, updated in September 2026, publishes that firm's own prices: a readiness audit at $3,500 to $8,500, an implementation sprint at $18,000 to $60,000, and managed services from $1,500 a month. Those are their numbers for their scopes, not ours.

The main thing figures like these show is how wide the spread is. The number on a proposal tells you very little until you know what is inside it, so read the scope first.

What should you ask before you sign anything?

Ask whether the price is fixed or hourly, and what happens if the work takes longer. Ask what will exist when the project ends, and who owns it. Ask who approves what the system produces, and what it is allowed to see. Ask what you will pay each month afterward, and whether you can stop. Ask for the answers in writing.

We cannot tell you in advance how much time or money a system will save you, so we do not try. What we can do is agree in writing, before we build, what working means, and show it to you working before we hand it over.