More Than a Product: How KSN Found the Right AI Partner
Choosing an AI timekeeping tool is never just a technology decision. For law firms taking their first steps into artificial intelligence, it’s equally about finding a vendor who will work alongside you, flexible enough to start where you are and responsive enough to improve as you go.
That was the lens Lieke Daley brought to the search. As COO and lead of Kovitz Shifrin Nesbit’s firm-wide AI initiatives, he spent a few months evaluating options before landing on Billables AI. The decision came down to both product and people.
AI Isn’t an Experiment — It’s a Strategy
KSN represents thousands of clients and community associations throughout the US, with offices in Illinois, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin. The firm’s practice spans community association law, landlord-tenant matters, property tax appeals, debt collection, and litigation.
For Daley, modernizing the firm through AI is a deliberate, long-term initiative, not a one-off project. He’s leading it personally, and AI timekeeping was the first chapter of that story.
“We incorporate AI into workflows where it fits and where it helps, with a focus on improving the efficiency of our teams,” he said.
Daley approached the search the way he approaches everything: systematically.
“I was the one who saw the first demo, looked at the products, talked to vendors, and involved end users when I thought we were ready for that phase,” he said.
Not Every Vendor Will Meet You Where You Are
Daley evaluated roughly six AI timekeeping solutions. As he moved through the process, the differences between vendors became clear, and they weren’t always about features.
“There’s a lot of high-pressure sales going on with many of the other products,” he said.
Several required expensive upfront onboarding commitments before a firm could even pilot the tool. Others pushed firms to commit their entire attorney roster at once, regardless of readiness.
KSN wasn’t ready for that. The firm wanted to pilot thoughtfully before a firm-wide rollout, assessing results in one department before expanding.
“We evaluated a number of solutions, and Billables AI stood apart — not just on the product, but on how they approach the relationship from day one.”
Lieke Daley
Chief Operating Officer
Among the vendors he evaluated, Billables AI stood out for understanding that adopting AI timekeeping is a significant shift in how people work, and for being willing to support a deliberate, phased approach to getting there.
The Right Partner From Day One
The tone was set from his very first conversation with the Billables AI team.
Daley described the Billables team as responsive and quick to improve.
“They’re a great team to work with. I got a real feeling of agility from Billables AI — they listen to their customers, respond to feedback quickly, and you can see it in how consistently they keep improving the product.”
Lieke Daley
Chief Operating Officer
KSN rolled out Billables AI to its litigation department first, its most time-intensive practice group for time tracking, where they could best assess adoption and impact. The shift asked something real of attorneys: instead of manually entering time at the end of the day, they were now reviewing and approving AI-generated entries, a completely different workflow. Daley anticipated a longer adjustment.
“If anything, adoption was probably smoother than I would have expected,” he said.
Attorney sentiment since then has been consistent.
“Everybody says they love Billables AI — for the litigation department, it has been a really beneficial solution.”
A Strong Start — and More to Come
When asked whether he’d recommend Billables AI to another firm, Daley doesn’t hesitate.
“Billables AI is just a great company to work with,” he said.
He’s already thinking about the next step, recommending Billables to another practice group that, like litigation, would benefit from real-time activity capture.
The rollout has also given KSN a new level of visibility into how support staff spend their time. Non-billing staff are now passively tracked through Billables, generating far more detail about their daily activity than the firm was ever able to capture before, with little extra effort from the staff themselves. Daley is exploring routing that data to department supervisors, giving them a clearer picture of workloads and a stronger foundation for feedback and coaching conversations.
For a firm with AI on the roadmap across every department, KSN’s experience with Billables has done more than solve a timekeeping problem. It’s shown them what the right AI partner looks like.
