Cash is AI business case king

As appeared on Briefing on October 21, 2025

Chris Cartrett, CEO at Aderant, says law firms are more eager to introduce genAI for operational advantage, and there’s no better place to start proving value to all than the back-office business of turning work completed into prompter payment

Between a fifth and a quarter of new conversations Aderant is having with law firm customers now concern an aspect of its rapidly growing AI toolkit focused entirely on optimising the business of law, says CEO Chris Cartrett.

It’s a dramatic shift from the situation even a year ago. “We’ve poured huge investment into improving the efficiency of firms’ work-to-cash performance in the back-end — all the complex processes that connect to how fast firms are paid — and can see the impact will be enormous,” he says.  “It’s so workflow-driven, but with so many manual elements, and firms are now really leaning into this chance to change.”

A period of understandable nervousness about the implications for valuable firm data has passed, he explains. “There is the understanding that it won’t be training an AI model in the process.” Rather there’s ample space for AI to support the multi-faceted risk-management effort, no less than broad transformation of business management efficiency that will benefit all.

“The ultimate financial impact of higher realisation stems from staying compliant with all the rules in place for any client relationship — bills going out must align with the expectations set out in the engagement,” Cartrett explains. “Firms can really reduce levels of rejections, write-downs and other challenges in parts of the billing process, using AI to lower the likelihood of human error.”

It also maps to firms increasingly looking to AI to power up lawyer productivity and sharpen competitive edge on all sorts of work types. “A very large and traditional global firm even acquired an AI business. They needed the talent on the team and saw an opportunity to innovate their client experience,” Cartrett observes.

A future of process autonomy

Aderant has 11 applications with some genAI component today — from iTimekeep to help lawyers to capture accurate data about billable activities, to Onyx for managing that continuous compliance with changing outside counsel guidelines (OCGs) in the final bill. In August 2025 it acquired the legal business assets of HerculesAI — bringing additional features that feed real-time compliance, audit and analytics around these potential process bottlenecks, as well as considerable data-science talent to fuel engines of future transformation.

Cartrett says: “The number one goal for us all is truly automated, autonomous management of work-to-cash — from time recording to collection — where an individual working at the firm is freed from manual parts of process and can ultimately monitor what the system is doing.”

However, this end-to-end flow of efficiency is only possible through a unified platform that enables an integrated, consistent experience across the toolset. That is Aderant’s cloud-based ecosystem called Stridyn.

“A firm’s data is also such a valuable strategic asset, it must be organised for access by any route — their own data lake, an Aderant application, or other source,” he says. The Stridyn platform is designed to meet both these visions of more agile legal business management — and comes with scalable and customisable dashboard analytics to help people make more validated data-driven decisions.

Meanwhile, AI-powered ‘virtual associate’ MADDI can call on this this wealth of information to answer individual natural-language queries, with context, about firm performance across multiple financial activities.

“After ChatGPT a genAI component to ask questions of your data is simply expected in the toolkit — every application will have one before long,” Cartrett observes. And Aderant clearly won’t be late to that party. For example, in recent new releases for accounts receivable and the general ledger, an ‘askMADDI’ window will pop up through which people can call up core management information to inform a task in the moment, avoiding the time-consuming need to turn around a whole report.

Approach with openness and education

But while momentum is clearly behind the genAI juggernaut across sectors and services, law firms are starting to focus in on the final return on what are unavoidably heavy investments. For lawyers delivering client service this often still centres on how any individual chooses to adopt and adapt — whereas applications on the operational side of a law firm’s work may enjoy a natural advantage, says Cartrett: “A more transactional, repeatable process, there’s a slightly clearer picture of the change in business performance over time to assess the value — for example, fewer rejected bills to handle than before.”

Aderant also ensures it stays open to how other technologists’ AI strategies are evolving, as a poor integration can frustrate the pursuit of value whether in bottom line or business user experience. “As the core financial system, the foundation of the business, there’s a responsibility to make investments and decisions that help to lift and empower everyone,” he concludes. Alongside educating the market on how it simply must find ways to react to fast-changing options for technology-driven service without a climate of fear — really a cultural mission — as an AI race to push, pivot and remain ahead clearly intensifies, it’s currently a responsibility he takes very seriously indeed.