Legal Vertical Workshop

Cumulus Vertical Workshop · Wednesday 25 November 2026 · virtual, full day

Find the Secure AI revenue in legal.

A full-day working session for Ingram Micro Microsoft partners. How law firms make money, where AI could help, who signs the order, and how to reach them. Included with Cumulus Practice and Executive. £500 per MSP for Community members, up to 2 seats.

Microsoft co-op funding. Subject to eligibility, you may be able to claim back up to 100% of the £500. We give you the invoice and the proof-of-execution paperwork the claim needs. Check with Ingram that you qualify before you rely on it.

£500Per MSP, not per person
2Seats included
Full dayVirtual, run once
Up to 200Named UK law firm target accounts
Legal vertical workshop for Ingram Micro Microsoft partners: a full-day session on how law firms make money, where AI can help, who signs the order and how to reach them. You leave with the workshop slide deck, 200 named UK law firm target accounts, and tools and templates. It costs 500 pounds per MSP for two seats, and is free for Cumulus Practice and Executive members.
The principle

You sell the same technology to every industry. You cannot sell the same business case to every industry.

The same Microsoft work sells differently to a law firm than to a manufacturer, because their money is made and lost in different places.

Most law firms have drafted this document before. Nobody can find it, because know-how is filed by client and not by problem. So an associate drafts it again from scratch, bills the hours, and the firm writes some of them off at billing.

Down and Across  ·  the Vertical Business Outcomes Consulting Method

Commercial consulting goes deep into one sector. Technology implementation works largely the same way across all of them. Both matter, and they are bought by different people.

Legal
Professional services
Manufacturing
Healthcare
Retail
Logistics
Understand the business
 
 
 
 
 
 
Redesign the work
 
 
 
 
 
 
Build the case
 
 
 
 
 
 
Implement
 
 
 
 
 
 
Run and support
 
 
 
 
 
 
Vertical · deep in one sector
Commercial consulting
Bought by the CEO, COO, CRO, CFO and CIO.
They need measurable business outcomes.
Horizontal · same across every sector
Technology implementation
Bought by the head of IT and the IT team.
They need IT policies and change management.

Secure AI adds a business conversation above the technical one. Neither is better. An MSP needs both, and needs to know which one it is in.

Answers: I already know Microsoft, so why do I need a legal workshop? You already sell across the horizontal. This workshop builds the vertical.

This is how Cumulus reads the sector. It comes from our own model and from interviews with people who run these firms. Treat it as a pattern to test on your own clients, not a fact.

The problem

Being brought in after the business decision has already been made.

That decision gets made in a conversation about the client’s business, not their IT. This workshop is about how to get into that conversation.

Before the decision
We only hear about it when they ask us to quote.
After the build
We built exactly what they asked for, but there was no next conversation.

Whoever leads the commercial conversation writes the requirement everybody else quotes against. A requirement written without you leaves you competing inside somebody else’s decision, often on scope and price rather than business value.

Step 1 · know the sector

Three numbers a law firm board watches.

Most technical sales conversations do not begin with these. If yours does, you have a much stronger reason to speak with the people who own the economics.

Realisation

Their own trend

Time billed against time recorded. The closest thing this sector has to gross margin. Ask for their own figure, and whether it has fallen.

One point of realisation on a £74m firm is roughly £740,000.

Lockup

90 to 110 days

Work in progress days plus debtor days. Cash the partners are funding out of their own drawings.

On a £74m firm, ten days of lockup is roughly £2m of cash. Partners feel this one personally.

Leverage

3:1 to 5:1

Associates and paralegals doing the work for each partner. It decides whether a matter is profitable, and it is also the firm’s training model.

Below 2:1 the partners are doing the drafting. Raise this yourself, before they do.

Which law firm are you in front of

Five kinds of business. One method.

All five sell the time of qualified people, so one model covers them all. What changes is how each type loses money.

The legal sector model
Commercial and corporate
Multi-office firm, 100 to 1,000 people
How they lose money
Drafting from scratch what the firm has drafted a hundred times. And fixed fees scoped from memory.
Private client
Wills, probate, trusts and tax, 20 to 300 people
How they lose money
Time recorded late. And long-running matters that never get billed.
Personal injury and claims
Volume practice, often fixed fee or conditional
How they lose money
Cases that run past the fee. And the bundling and admin nobody costs.
Conveyancing and property
Volume residential or commercial real estate
How they lose money
Waiting on other parties. And chasing searches and replies.
Employment and regulatory
Specialist teams, 15 to 200 people
How they lose money
The same research repeated across matters. And partner time spent on assembly.

Which one you are in front of changes the examples, not the method.

Answers: will this cover the firms I actually sell to? The worked example is a regional full-service firm with a strong commercial team, because that is the largest population.

The method

The 4-Step Vertical Business Outcomes System, applied to legal.

One method, applied to a different sector each month.

The Four Moves  ·  the 4-Step Vertical Business Outcomes System

Step 1

Know the sector

How law firms make money, the numbers their board watches, and where realisation, capacity and cash get trapped.

Step 2

Open the door

The clients you already have, the firms worth targeting, and how to get a meeting with the person who signs. This is not a cold-calling list.

Step 3

Find the AI opportunity

Where AI could make them more money, free up time, or cut risk. Then how a client moves through the four steps, starting with a free assessment.

Step 4

Build the case

How the work should run afterwards, what it is worth, and how to prove it if they ask.

Know the sector → open the door → find the AI opportunity → build the case

Answers: what will the day teach me to do? Sector knowledge, then trusted access, then a client opportunity, then a commercial case.

Step 3 · find the AI opportunity

Where the opportunity sits in a law firm.

Five places to look. They are not equal, and the biggest one is usually not where you start.

Legal AI opportunity map
High value · low difficulty
Drafting from precedent
Where the fee is earned, and where the same document gets drafted for the hundredth time.
High value · low difficulty
Know-how retrieval
The firm has done it before and cannot find it. Know-how is filed by client, not by problem.
Medium value · low difficulty
Narrative drafting
Badly written time narratives get bills reduced. Unglamorous, and real money.
High value · medium difficulty
Review prioritisation
Large document sets ordered so the important material surfaces first. The largest block of associate and paralegal time.
High value · high difficulty
Matter cost prediction
What a matter like this has actually cost before, available at scoping. Almost no firm captures cost at matter level, so it cannot be built yet.

The one worth most is often the one they cannot build yet. Telling them apart is the job.

Answers: where would I actually start in a law firm? Finding and ranking these for one firm is what the Secure AI Business Envisioning Workshop does. Sizing the chosen one in the firm’s own numbers is what the Secure AI Business Case & Process Design does.

Who owns the economics

Who you need in the room at the client.

These vary by sector. In legal they are usually:

Managing Partner

Owns profit per equity partner

And the growth plan. Ask what one point of realisation is worth to them, and let them do the sum.

Finance Director

Owns working capital

Understands the figures faster than anyone else in the room, and will check yours.

Operations Director

Owns capacity, downtime and quality

Knows exactly where the hours go. Nobody ever asks them about it in money.

Head of Know-how

Owns the precedent bank

Knows the firm has drafted it before and cannot find it. Rarely asked about it in money. Your best way in.

The alternatives

How MSPs usually get ready for a sector.

All three are sensible. Here is where each one stops being enough.

Read a market report

You get the size of the market and the growth rate.

Where this stops working.
It cannot tell you what one firm loses on drafting from scratch, or who in that firm owns the number.

Send the team on Microsoft training

Your engineers learn the product properly, and usually for free.

Where this stops working.
It teaches the technology. It does not tell you which industry to go after or what to charge.

Use a generic AI deck

You get a list of things AI can do, with examples.

Where this stops working.
A finance director has seen that deck. They want to know what it does to their numbers.

The workshop gives you the part none of them cover. How a law firm makes money, where AI could help, who signs the order, and 200 firms to call.

You will recognise these

Four things law firms say.

If you have sold into a law firm you have heard at least two of them. Each one is money, and none of them sounds like an AI problem.

Associates draft from scratch what we have drafted a hundred times.
We write off time every month and nobody can tell me why.
We quote fixed fees without knowing what a matter will cost.
Someone in this firm has done this before and I cannot find it.

Their words beat your list every time. The workshop covers what each one costs, and which of them AI can do something about.

What you take away

What you leave with on the day.

Legal commercial map

The five sub-sectors, the three board numbers, and the eight processes that carry the money.

A priced offer

One opportunity packaged into something your team can price.

Buyer map

Four roles, what each one owns, and the number each is measured on.

Target accounts

Up to 200 named UK law firms, picked to match the kind of firm the workshop covers. Enough to start booking meetings.

Opening message

What to say first, and what to ask before you propose anything.

The Customer Ascension Ladder

How to move a client from a first conversation to an implementation, without asking them to commit early.

The Customer Ascension Ladder

Three priced steps, then the build.

The client only buys the next step if the last one was worth it.

  • 1 Secure AI Opportunity Assessment Free. Find where Secure AI could create value.
  • 2 Secure AI Business Envisioning Workshop £2,500. One day with the leadership team. Get the leadership team agreed on what matters most, which opportunity comes first, and whether to go ahead at all.
  • 3 Secure AI Business Case & Process Design From £15,000. About 30 days. Size the chosen opportunity in the client’s own numbers. Redesign the process, and create the business case and high-level solution design needed before build.
  • 4 Secure AI Implementation Partner price. You complete the detailed technical design, build it, get people using it, and run it for a monthly fee.

One day does not make you a legal consultant. It does let you open the right conversation and work out whether there is a deal in it. If a real opportunity needs deeper work, Cumulus does the commercial side. Your client stays yours. Steps 1 to 3 are the Cumulus commercial layer, ending at the high-level solution design. Step 4 is the MSP technical layer: the detailed technical design, then build, deploy and integrate.

Practice and Executive members pay nothing, because this workshop is included. Community members pay £500 per MSP, plus VAT, and that covers two seats.

Eligible partners may be able to use Microsoft co-op funding. Check your eligibility and the claim route with Ingram Micro before you count on the money.

Registration

Book your MSP’s place.

Four short steps. Two seats are included, and you can add the second person later.

Step 1

Your Cumulus membership


Practice and Executive members already have all ten workshops. Community members pay £500 plus VAT per MSP for this one, and that covers two seats.

Step 2

Your MSP


Exactly as it appears in Microsoft Partner Center. Microsoft only accepts a co-op claim where the invoice matches that name.



Your co-op claim needs this. Find it in Partner Center under your account settings, as the Location ID for the address above.


Step 3

Who is coming





We send joining details, your invoice and your target account list to this email.




Step 4

Confirm and book


This goes on the invoice for your 200 target accounts. Not sure yet? Choose “Not decided yet” and tell us before the workshop.

What happens next

1. You pay £500 plus VAT on Stripe, on the next screen. Stripe emails you a receipt. Need four seats? Set the quantity to 2 at checkout.

2. Two business days before the workshop, we email your full invoice for Microsoft co-op, written the way Microsoft asks for it.

3. After the day, you tell us which accounts to target and your list follows within 7 business days.

What happens next

1. Nothing to pay. We confirm your membership with Ingram Micro, then send joining details.

2. After the day, you tell us which accounts to target and your list follows within 7 business days.

Now choose the button that matches your membership.




Ten sectors. One workshop a month. Legal is the second.

Book Legal for £500. Or join Cumulus Practice for £3,500 a year and get all ten workshops plus the complete 5P System. Ten workshops bought separately would cost £5,000.

Win the business case before you win the build.