# A legal AI workspace for boutique law firms Source: https://mikeforlaw.com/firms/boutique Updated: 2026-10-13 Boutique firms use Mike as a private workspace tuned to one specialty. It is loaded with the firm's own precedents, checklists and research sources, reads matter documents, searches case law, and drafts in the firm's voice. Every answer cites its source, and Cuanto Labs handles setup and upkeep. A boutique competes on depth. Its value is in the forms it has refined, the issues it knows to look for, and the precedents it has built over many matters. Mike is configured around that knowledge, so the firm's way of doing the work becomes a set of workflows that everyone on the team can run. Cuanto Labs connects Mike to your matter folders and builds the workflows with your partners. Client matters in your specialty stay inside the firm's own installation. ## What Mike does for your practice - **Your checklist, as a workflow.** The issues a specialist knows to look for can be written down as a saved workflow. Mike runs it on a new matter's documents and reports what it found against each item, with a citation, so the firm's expertise is applied consistently. - **Precedent-based drafting.** Mike drafts from the firm's refined forms and past work product, in Word, in the firm's voice. Revisions to an existing draft show as tracked changes, and a partner reviews before anything goes out. - **Specialist document extraction.** Tabular Review fields are defined by you, so the table pulls exactly what your specialty cares about from each document, and nothing generic. Cells link to the source page and the table exports to Excel. - **Case law research in your niche.** Mike searches published case law on the narrow questions your practice turns on and reads the opinions before summarizing them. We can connect the specialist research sources the firm subscribes to. - **Comparing against your standard.** Upload a counterparty's draft or an opposing submission and Mike lists where it departs from the firm's standard positions, by topic, with the section for each. - **Associate onboarding.** New lawyers learn the firm's approach by running its workflows on real documents and seeing which provisions and facts the firm treats as important, with sources linked. ## How we set it up for your firm - **Built around your specialty.** We start by listing the documents, issues and deliverables that define your practice, and shape the templates, review forms and workflows around them with your partners. - **Your knowledge, loaded.** We load the firm's forms, checklists, memos and past work product, organized so Mike drafts and reviews against the firm's own standard and not a generic one. - **Specialist research sources.** If the firm subscribes to niche research or decision sources, we connect them so Mike can search them next to published case law. - **Working sessions with the partners.** The most valuable input is a few sessions in which partners write down the positions the firm treats as standard and the departures it will accept. Those sessions become the checklists Mike runs. - **Your specialty's terms of art.** We give the workflows the vocabulary your specialty uses, so each concept is asked about under the names your documents actually use for it. ## Questions attorneys ask ### How does Mike capture what makes our firm distinctive? By loading your own forms, checklists and past work and turning your review habits into saved workflows. Mike then applies your standard instead of a generic one, and reports against each item with a citation. It captures what is written down, so partners should expect to spend time with us stating the issues they look for. ### Will Mike know our niche area of law? Mike searches published case law and reads the opinions it cites. For specialist statutes, regulations and decision sources, we can connect the research sources your firm already subscribes to. It does not replace the specialist judgment that is the reason clients hire you, and every citation links to its source so it can be confirmed. ### What if our specialty has few published decisions? Mike searches the published case law that exists, checking each case it cites against CourtListener, and says so when little is found. Many boutiques rely on agency rulings, arbitral awards or their own memos instead. Where your firm has access to those, we connect them, and Mike reads your own past work product so that institutional knowledge is searchable. ### We have a small team. Who maintains the system? Cuanto Labs does. We install Mike, connect it to your folders, build the first workflows with your partners, train the team and maintain the system afterward. One person at the firm adds and removes users. Your lawyers spend their time on the specialty, and not on managing software. If the specialty changes or a new service line opens, we adjust the setup with you. ### Can Mike help us compare a counterparty's draft with our standard? Yes. Load your standard form once and Mike compares each incoming draft against it, listing departures by topic with the section for each, and can redline the language you want changed. A partner decides which departures to accept. Because the comparison is against your form, it reflects your positions and not general practice. ### Can an associate run the firm's checklist without a partner present? Yes, and that is a common reason boutiques adopt it. The checklist is a saved workflow, so an associate runs it on a new matter and gets a report against each item with a page citation. A partner then reviews the report rather than rereading the documents. The associate also sees what the firm treats as important, which speeds up training. ## Related - [Solo practices](https://mikeforlaw.com/firms/solo) - [Small firms](https://mikeforlaw.com/firms/small-firm) - [Mid-size firms](https://mikeforlaw.com/firms/mid-size) ## Book a call Book a 30-minute call at https://meet.mike.cuantolabs.com or email office@cuantolabs.com.