If You Run a Professional Services Firm and AI Is Already in the Building

In most professional services firms (legal, accounting, consulting, agency work), AI has already arrived. Associates use ChatGPT for first drafts. Partners use Claude for research. The marketing team has a Copilot license. Someone in operations is testing an automation tool the leadership hasn't seen. Nobody has a complete picture of what's running, what data is going where, or what the firm's exposure looks like under client confidentiality agreements.

This is the situation the AI Exposure Audit was built for.

Three weeks, fixed scope, fixed fee. Week one inventories every AI tool in use across the firm, authorized or not. Week two categorizes each tool by risk, with attention to the EU AI Act if any of the firm's clients sit inside its scope. Week three delivers four written documents: an AI Tool Inventory, an Exposure Report, a one-page Usage Policy, and a Decision Framework for evaluating future tools.

The reason this engagement fits professional services specifically is the combination of two things. The firm has client confidentiality obligations that AI usage can quietly violate. And the firm has the kind of distributed, professional staff who adopt new tools without asking. Both of those conditions create exposure faster than internal governance can catch up.

If you suspect your firm has AI in motion and no clear picture of what's running, the right starting point is the Exposure Audit.