FOUNDER · EVERY WEDNESDAY · SEPTEMBER 2, 2026
AI drafts. You sign.
Over coffee last month with the managing partner of a firm. He tells me, with real pride: “My teams draft three times faster than a year ago.” I believe him. I ask one question: “And who reviews it before it goes to the client?” A silence. Then: “Everyone reviews their own.”
I am not telling this to embarrass him. I have seen it several times since, in law as in accounting. The gain in speed is real, and valuable. But the review, the one that carries the firm’s signature, was organized nowhere. It rested on habit, at the very moment the pace had doubled.
That is the real question in this sector, and it is not the one people expect. Almost everyone has adopted AI: among accounting firms, 92 percent already use AI tools, yet only 25 percent use them at scale. Everything sits in that gap. The question is no longer “should we start,” but “how do we industrialize without giving anything up on quality.”
And in our professions, quality has a name: the signature. One serious trial showed it in black and white. AI produces a first draft up to 80 percent faster, but its average accuracy lands at 3 out of 5, where a professional reaches 3.5. Speed is not accuracy. Where a signature commits you, review is not overhead: it is the product.
This is not a technology problem. It is an execution problem.
An international firm, Ashurst, did what few take the time to do: before scaling, it measured. A trial across 411 professionals, to learn precisely where AI helps, and where it misleads.
The result set a clear rule. On first drafts, you save a lot of time, so you delegate. On what commits the firm, you never delegate: professional review is part of the process, and part of the price. They mapped their craft: what AI drafts, what the professional signs. That map is not a deployment detail. It is half the value.
The 3 essentials for you
- The question is no longer adoption, it is industrialization. Almost every firm is trying; only a quarter has scaled. That gap is what now makes the difference.
- Speed is not accuracy: the first draft is far faster, but stays less precise than a professional. Where a signature commits you, review is the product.
- AI industrializes the first draft and the review. Judgment, the signature and the client relationship remain the craft. You move your teams’ time, never the responsibility.
What I would do in your shoes…
Borrow Ashurst’s approach, at a firm’s scale, without a grand program. First, pick a single family of tasks where the hours already add up: one type of matter, a document your teams draft every week. Then measure before and after, on the same scope: hours per file, and above all the share sent back in review. That second figure is the one that tells the truth.
Then write, on one page, the boundary: what AI drafts, what the professional reviews and signs. Your teams need that map more than another tool. Finally, the awkward question: what happens to the hour you save? If a first draft is five times faster and still billed by the hour, you are destroying your own revenue. That is the real decision: move the value toward fixed fees, advice, the relationship.
What we are building at YPrtnrs points the same way. An execution engine, Y, your AI chief of staff, that drafts, prepares and organizes, then leaves the decision to you. The review and the signature stay with you. I propose, you decide.
Write to me. You run a firm and you live this gap between speed and the signature? You have solved it another way? Write to me: arnaud@yprtnrs.com. I read everything, and I will answer you personally.
