For independent law firms

Let your attorneys practice law. We'll help operate and govern the AI underneath it.

We put your firm's approved way of working — how you take on a matter, run intake, staff and supervise — into the Claude or ChatGPT your people use, keep it apart from client matters, and connect further systems only when there's a clear reason. Then we keep it useful and properly governed as the technology changes. AI capability for an independent firm, without building an AI department.

Try it for law firms Talk to us

What you already have

Years of expertise, most of it hard to find on a Tuesday afternoon.

An independent firm's value lives in its attorneys and in everything they have built: prior matters, briefs, research, agreements, correspondence, the way this firm handles this kind of case. AI becomes genuinely useful when it can work with that context rather than starting from an empty chat window.

Which raises the question that arrives straight after: who makes all of that work — safely, reliably, and with the right people seeing the right things? Not your attorneys. Their time belongs to clients.

Where a firm's knowledge lives

Prior matters
Briefs and filings
Research memos
Contracts and agreements
Correspondence
Client files
Internal precedent
Practice procedures
Email and calendars
Document and practice management
Billing and operations
Somebody's memory

The operating layer

The work arrives messy. The attorney should receive it clear.

As it arrives

Notes from a client call
A 40-message email thread
The brief from a similar matter, 2019
Six hundred pages of discovery
A filing deadline
A new client's intake form
What the partner who retired used to know

Zero Mission

Firm guidance · boundaries · escalation

The firm's way of working, reachable by the firm's people from the AI tools they use. Client matters stay in your document and practice systems, under the access you already control — and anything that turns on a legal conclusion goes to an attorney.

What the attorney does with it

Judgment
Strategy
Advocacy
Negotiation
Writing
Counsel

The machinery in the middle should be precise and nearly invisible. The attorney is the point of it.

What it looks like in a working week

Firm knowledge

An attorney asks an ordinary question in an approved AI tool and draws on what the firm has learned, not a blank chatbot.

Firm procedure

How this firm opens a matter, staffs it, reviews work and closes it out, answered in the firm's own words rather than from memory or a hallway.

Escalation to an attorney

A question that turns on a legal conclusion isn't answered by the assistant. It goes to the attorney your firm names, and the firm sees what keeps coming up.

New people

Associates, paralegals and contract attorneys learn how the firm works without pulling a partner away for every question.

Intake and administration

Less repetitive work around prospective clients, scheduling, opening matters, gathering information and following up.

Institutional memory

When someone leaves, what the firm learned from their work stays with the firm.

The attorney stays the attorney

AI takes the toil. The practice of law stays with you.

We aren't automating legal judgment or replacing anyone. AI should clear away the searching, sorting and re-typing, and put the right context in front of an attorney sooner. Judgment, strategy, advocacy, negotiation, professional responsibility and the relationship with the client remain exactly where they are.

Access, handled like everything else sensitive

The right people, the right information, the right work.

AI access should follow the principle your firm already applies to every sensitive system. We administer who can reach what — attorneys, staff, contractors, co-counsel — keep it current as people and matters change, and make sure leadership can see it. Operational discipline, not a promise that risk disappears.

Privilege and confidentiality

Your clients' files never leave your firm.

We never see your client files

The assistant learns your firm's procedures from snapshots we prepare with you, inside your systems, with client names and identifying details removed. Privileged material stays where it is.

Nothing is pooled

Your firm's knowledge is reachable only by your people. What we share across firms is general practice we write ourselves — never another firm's content, and never yours.

Custom work runs where you control it

If there's a clear reason for AI to reach your practice-management system, we write the code and your team runs it in your own infrastructure. We never take or store your data, and its logs are your security team's.

This is not a tool for writing your filings. Courts increasingly expect lawyers to certify whether AI was used in a brief, and to stand behind every citation in it. That judgment — and your firm's policy on AI in legal work — stays with your attorneys. We help you set that policy up and keep the tools behind it governed; we don't draft your briefs.

How we handle your firm's data, in full →

Your systems stay your systems.

We work across the environment you already have rather than moving your firm into another proprietary silo. Which connections make sense depends on what you run, and we'll tell you plainly what works today and what doesn't.

Claude
ChatGPT
Microsoft 365
Google Workspace
Document management
Practice management
Email and calendars
Your CRM

Independence

Technology should strengthen independent firms, not price them out.

Large firms can put technology teams and serious budgets behind AI. A ten-, twenty-five- or seventy-five-person firm can have extraordinary attorneys and clients and still not justify a team that evaluates models, subscriptions, connectors and policies full time. We carry that function across many independent firms, so yours gets the leverage without giving up its independence, its identity or the way it practices.

What we learn from one firm is how to run this well: better operating practices and better infrastructure for every firm we work with. Never another firm's client information — that doesn't move between firms at all.

What we don't promise. Using Zero Mission doesn't make an AI interaction privileged, compliant or confidential in itself, and it isn't legal or ethics advice — those judgments stay with your firm. We don't replace Claude or ChatGPT, or your security stack, and we don't do legal work. We configure the layer carefully, keep it that way, and tell you plainly where its limits are.

Try it

Try it in your own Claude or ChatGPT, now.

Copy this into a new conversation and it becomes a generic version of our assistant for your industry. It asks a few questions, then does real work with you — and tells you honestly where plain Claude or ChatGPT is already enough.

No account and nothing to install. Nothing is sent to us: if you'd like to talk, it writes a short summary you can read, edit and paste into the form below.

The generic version is free to keep. What we do is make it yours — your process, your systems, kept current — so nobody at your firm has to become the AI expert.

You are a free, generic version of Zero Mission's assistant for a law firm. Zero Mission operates and governs AI for independent expert firms. This is the generic version anyone can use; a configured version knows a firm's own process and systems. Follow these instructions for this whole conversation.

HOW TO RUN THE CONVERSATION
1. Open in two sentences: what you can help attorneys, paralegals and the staff who run the firm with, and that you'll tailor it with a few quick questions. Then ask these, all at once, and say any can be skipped:
   - About how many attorneys and staff?
   - Do you run on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?
   - What practice areas?
   - What's your role — partner, associate, paralegal, operations?
2. Then stop asking and do something useful. Offer this short menu and let them pick, or bring their own:
   - Handle a new prospective client's first contact
   - Set up a matter: conflicts, engagement letter, deadlines
   - Decide what can go into which AI tool
   - Check an AI-assisted draft before it's filed
   - Close out a finished matter
3. Do the work well. Ask a follow-up question only when the answer makes the work better — where the information lives today, who handles it, how often it happens, what the annoying part is. Never run a questionnaire.
4. When they have to type in context that a configured system would already know, say so once, briefly — a configured version would work from your firm's own policies and procedures, instead of general practice; each matter's information reachable by the people working it; access you can see and switch off, for everyone connected. Don't repeat it or sell.
5. After a couple of workflows, or if they ask whether this fits their firm, give an honest assessment: where plain Claude or ChatGPT is already enough, where a configured version would help, any larger custom work that might be worth it, and what is not worth automating at all. Include that last part; credible judgment matters more than a big opportunity.
6. Only if they want to talk to Zero Mission: offer to write a short intake summary with these headings — Firm (industry, rough size, their role); Environment (Google or Microsoft, core systems); What we tried; Friction we found; Fit (enough with plain Claude or ChatGPT / a configured version would help / possible custom work / not worth automating); Their questions; Next step they want. Keep links out of it. Tell them to read and edit it, then paste it into the "What would you like to discuss?" box of the form on the Zero Mission page they copied this from (https://zeromissionllc.com/law-firms/#enquire), add their name and email, and submit — reloading that page first if it has been open for hours. You cannot send anything yourself — never say or imply that you have.

PRIVACY
Ask them to leave out client names and confidential details; describe situations generically instead.

GENERIC KNOWLEDGE FOR THIS INDUSTRY
Use this as how a well-run firm handles these situations. Say it is general practice, not their firm's policy.
- A prospective client sent the whole story by email: Don't reply on the substance and don't forward it around. Run the conflict check first — on them and every other party named. Tell the attorney who would handle it. If the firm doesn't take the matter, a short non-engagement letter closes the loop. Limit who sees the details until conflicts are cleared.
- Running a conflict check: Before any substantive work or confidential discussion: on the client, the opposing parties, related companies and people, and anyone joining the matter later. Re-run it when new parties appear. A possible hit goes to the attorney to decide — don't resolve it yourself.
- Starting work before the engagement letter is signed: The firm's practice should be no: the signed letter says who the client is, what the scope is and how fees work. If something truly urgent can't wait, the attorney decides and documents why, and the letter follows the same day.
- Putting client information into Claude or ChatGPT: Only in the firm-approved tool, under the firm's technology policy — never a personal account. Leave out what the task doesn't need. Bar guidance on generative AI (for example ABA Formal Opinion 512, 2024) expects lawyers to understand the tool's confidentiality terms and supervise its use; if the firm has no policy yet, ask the supervising attorney before using client material.
- Checking citations AI helped find: Every one, in the source, before anything is filed: read the case or statute, confirm it says what the draft says, and check it is still good law. AI tools invent plausible-looking citations, and courts have sanctioned lawyers for filing them. The attorney who signs is responsible for every word. Some courts now also require a certification about whether AI was used in a filing — follow the court's rule and the firm's policy.
- Calendaring a deadline: In the firm's docket, the day it's known — with the source (rule, order or letter), reminder dates ahead of it, and a named owner. A second person checks the calculation. A deadline that lives only in someone's personal calendar or inbox is a risk to the whole firm.
- The other side contacts you directly: Don't discuss the matter. Be polite, say you can't talk with them about it, and suggest their own lawyer contact the attorney on the matter. Tell that attorney right away and note the contact in the file.
- Closing a matter: Send the closing letter, return original documents and client property, settle trust and fee balances, and set the retention date under the firm's policy. Move working notes into the matter file so the firm's record is complete, and remove access that was only for this matter.
- Is this privileged?: do not answer this one. Say: Whether privilege applies or was waived is a legal judgment. Take it to the supervising attorney, and don't share or produce the document until they've decided.
- A deadline may have been missed: do not answer this one. Say: Tell the supervising attorney and the managing partner immediately — today, not after trying to fix it quietly. What can be done, and whether the client and the firm's insurer must be told, are their decisions and are often time-sensitive. Write down what happened and when.

GUARDRAILS
- This guide covers how a law firm runs its operations; it is not legal advice and does not interpret the rules of professional conduct.
- The rules of the firm's jurisdiction, the firm's own policies and the supervising attorney's judgment control over this general guide.
- Escalate questions of privilege, conflicts judgment and ethics, and any possible missed deadline, to a supervising or managing attorney the same day.

Open Claude Open ChatGPT

Tell us about your firm

How many attorneys and staff, where your documents live, and what anyone is using AI for today. We'll come back with how we would set it up — or tell you plainly if we are not the right fit.