What inaction is costing your firm.

Most ROI calculators show what you'd save if you adopted AI. This one shows what you're losing every month you don't. Three inputs. Conservative numbers, anchored to peer-reviewed research. No email gate.

Sources: Harvard/BCG (2023), MIT (2023), Thomson Reuters (2024), Karbon State of AI (2025). Conservative end of every range used. Vendor claims excluded.

Pick the three options on the left.

The number runs live. No submit button, no form, no email capture.

The maths, in full

Every number in this calculator is sourced. No vendor claims, no rounded-up marketing figures, no "imagine if" projections. Here's exactly how it's built.

Hours-per-person baseline

Hours/week reclaimable per person, by sector. Conservative end of every published range. Legal: 2 hrs/week. Accounting: 3 hrs/week. Advisory: 3 hrs/week. Consulting: 5 hrs/week.

Sources: Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals 2024, AICPA/CIMA 2024, Karbon State of AI 2025, Dell'Acqua et al. (HBS/BCG 2023).

Multiplier by current AI usage

Firms with no AI in use are losing the full baseline. Firms running standalone tools have captured roughly 30% of the available gains — the connections between tools are still missing. Firms with connected workflows have captured ~70% — the remaining gap is optimisation, not foundation.

Pattern matches the adoption curve in HBS/MIT Copilot field study (April 2025) and the integration-complexity barrier reported by 36% of firms (Capterra 2025).

Headcount scaling

Per-person hours multiplied by firm size. Solos count as 1. Small firms (2–5) calculated at 3.5 average. Mid-size (6–12) calculated at 9 average. Conservative bands — actual headcount may push the number higher.

Multipliers selected from midpoints rather than upper bounds to stay within conservative methodology.

Conversion to currency

Hours converted at sector-specific blended billing rates. Legal: 180/hr. Accounting: 120/hr. Advisory: 150/hr. Consulting: 140/hr. These are blended firm-level rates, not partner-level — solos at top of band may be losing more.

Cross-referenced against Law Society 2024 fee surveys, ACCA member rate data 2024, and Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals 2024.

What's deliberately excluded: Vendor productivity claims (Microsoft, Google, Salesforce internal surveys). "Up to" figures from marketing copy. Self-reported time savings without controlled methodology. Anything that couldn't be reproduced or independently verified.

This is the broad picture, not the actual number.

A calculator with three inputs can give you a defensible range. It can't tell you which workflow in your firm is leaking the most hours, which connection is worth building first, or which automation would fail in your regulatory context. That's what the audit does.

What this calculator does well

Gives you a sourced, conservative baseline for the order-of-magnitude cost of inaction. Useful for budgeting, for partner conversations, and for deciding whether AI automation is worth investigating further. The number is defensible — every input is anchored to published research.

What it can't tell you

Which of your specific workflows is leaking the most hours. Which connection between which tools is worth building first. Whether the highest-ROI automation in your firm passes the regulatory tests in your sector. The number above is real — but it's an average across firms like yours, not a map of yours specifically.

Turn the average into your actual number.

A 30-minute audit, no commitment. We map your real workflows, identify where the hours are actually going, and tell you what's worth building — and what isn't. You leave with a written summary either way.