What you can commission.
Four building blocks, each available on its own. Almost every firm starts with the model. What comes next is your call once the first one is running.
What each building block includes.
Claude Cowork in your own AWS account
The way in: an AWS account of your firm’s own, with Claude Cowork on top as the workspace.
I start with Claude Cowork. If your firm already works with another AI tool, I build on that instead.
- AWS confidentiality agreement for professionals bound by legal secrecy (§ 203 StGB, § 43e BRAO)
- Secure account setup with hardware MFA (sign-in requires a physical security key as well)
- Connection to Claude Cowork (the workspace for Claude, Anthropic’s AI model) through AWS Bedrock
- Acceptance testing and handover of the configuration
- Typical duration: 1–2 weeks
Connector
Connections to the systems your firm already works in.
- Review of your systems and context sources
- Access and confidentiality rules
- Connection to mailbox, calendar and practice management software
- Read-only by default, writes only after explicit approval
- Approval-based web search as a separate block
Context
Your firm’s knowledge and context in one place, readable for Claude and kept in open formats for you.
- Review of the available data
- Built as a folder of open files, without a vector database of its own until the volume calls for one
- Context from calendar, email and case file at runtime
- Synchronisation and upkeep on request
Workflows
Your recurring workflows as skills that Claude carries out in fixed steps.
- Needs analysis: “What eats the time?”
- Skills for your own workflows
- Deadlines, fees and other figures are calculated by a script that shows its working (example: legal-ops-germany (opens in a new tab))
- Test phase with fine-tuning
- Further development on request
Adoption Rolled out with the whole team: hands-on training, example cases from your own files and defined areas of use.
What you get out of it.
A worked example. If one lawyer saves five hours a week, at 250 € an hour that is roughly 60,000 € a year, provided the time goes into billable work.
Firm knowledge on call. Claude looks things up in your own documents before every answer instead of writing from memory.
No shadow AI. Instead of private accounts, the team uses one access that is logged and governed by a usage policy.
AI work as its own line item. The logs give you usage per lawyer. With that you can show AI work separately on client bills, if you want to.
Confidentiality holds. Your data sits in your own AWS account (Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud platform) in the EU, not in a vendor’s account, and is not used for training. Professionals bound by legal secrecy also get a separate confidentiality agreement (§ 203 StGB and § 43e BRAO, the German rules on professional secrecy for lawyers). More on security
It actually gets used. The whole team learns to work with it on cases from your own firm, including those who have had little to do with AI so far. Otherwise it often ends as a licence nobody opens after three weeks.
You get an environment that belongs to you.
No licence model
You are not renting access from me. Your firm contracts for model usage directly with AWS and pays AWS prices, with no margin on top and no fee per seat.
Not another tool to log into
No new window to paste case files into. Claude comes to where you already work: mailbox, calendar, practice software.
Not an AI agency
You will not have to explain to me why a statutory time limit is not a project deadline. I am a fully qualified lawyer. So the first hour goes into your questions, with no onboarding into the legal terms.
No lock-in to me
Account, configuration and documentation sit with the firm. If you end the engagement, everything keeps running on the same setup.
A licence from a vendor, or your own account.
Both routes can be set up in a professionally defensible way. They differ in who ends up owning what was built.
| Criterion | Licence from a vendor | Your own account |
|---|---|---|
| Contract partner | The vendor that resells the model | AWS, directly with your firm |
| Price per model call | Licence providers add a margin on the list price, up to 20 % in the offers I have seen | AWS list price, no middleman |
| Running costs | A fee per seat, whether or not it gets used | Billed by actual consumption, no seat fee |
| Choice of model | Whatever the vendor has integrated, often late | Any model enabled in your region |
| Confidentiality | Whatever the vendor’s terms and conditions say | A separate agreement for professionals bound by legal secrecy (§ 203 StGB, § 43e BRAO) |
| Logging | Whatever the vendor shows in its own interface | Invocation logs in your account, without content, reportable per lawyer |
| Your own workflows | Live inside the vendor’s interface | Sit as files in your environment, readable and versionable |
| If you switch | Access ends and what you built stays with the vendor | Account, configuration and documentation stay with you |
The comparison describes the typical case, not every single offering on the market. Which one adds up for your firm depends mostly on the number of lawyers and on how heavily the system actually gets used. Two figures are enough for the order of magnitude, and I work them through with you in the intro call.
From the intro call to handover.
Intro call
30 minutes, by video. The first ten minutes are yours: how you work today, what is actually missing, how many lawyers are affected, who decides and by when. Then we go through which building block makes sense first and what needs settling beforehand.
Short assessment
One page with the recommended first building block, its price and the points to settle beforehand. You can pass it on internally, even if you decide not to go ahead.
Setup
Usually one to two weeks for the first building block (model), including the confidentiality agreement with AWS. If that agreement doesn’t come together to your satisfaction, the engagement ends before any setup costs arise.
Acceptance and handover
An acceptance report with ten checks proves each setting one by one. The setup only counts as delivered once all ten pass. You also get a handover document recording the configuration.
Not sure which building block comes first?
We can settle that in 30 minutes.
Book an intro call (opens in a new tab)