# Beyond Timekeeping: Why Work Intelligence Matters More Than Ever

Guest Blog ft. Kourosh Zamani

Co-Founder and Head of Strategic Partnerships at Laurel&nbsp;

In this Q&amp;A, Kourosh Zamani shares his perspective on the future of legal work, the growing importance of work intelligence, and why visibility into people, processes, and workflows is becoming the foundation for better business decisions and successful AI adoption.

1. What are the biggest opportunities and challenges you see shaping the industry over the next 2-3 years? How is your organization adapting to these changes?&nbsp;

The biggest opportunity is also one of the biggest challenges: professional services firms are still early in figuring out how AI will actually change the economics of their businesses.&nbsp;

For a long time, growth largely meant hiring more people or raising rates. That model is getting harder as talent costs rise, clients expect greater efficiency and transparency, and AI begins to change how work gets done. Firms cannot afford vague AI experiments. They need secure, reliable systems that can show a measurable impact on revenue, margins, client delivery, and employee experience.&nbsp;

At Laurel, timekeeping was our entry point into law firms, but the vision was always much bigger. We believe the record of work, captured by timekeeping, is the foundational dataset for understanding how knowledge work actually gets done. AI has made that dataset exponentially more valuable because firms now need to understand not just what work happened, but what it cost, where AI was used, whether it created leverage, and what should be automated next.&nbsp;

That is the opportunity behind the Work Intelligence platform we’ve built. We’re giving firms a ground-truth view of how work happens so they can make better decisions about people, technology, and AI.&nbsp;&nbsp;

2. What trends are having the greatest impact on your customers today?&nbsp;

One of the biggest trends we hear about is the evolution of pricing across law firms. People have predicted the death of the billable hour for years but moving toward fixed-fee or value-based pricing requires firms to understand the true cost of producing knowledge work. Many still do not have the data they need to price engagements confidently and protect profitability.&nbsp;

AI is adding urgency to that conversation. If technology reduces the time required to complete certain types of work, firms need to reconsider how they price and communicate the value they deliver.&nbsp;

At the same time, our customers are being asked to do more with the same teams while improving margins and client service. They are also under pressure to show where AI is creating measurable value, rather than simply saying they are using it. That is pushing firms to look more closely at realization, billing speed, staffing, and the gap between work performed and time submitted.&nbsp;

3. What advice would you give to leaders looking to drive growth and innovation in today's environment?&nbsp;

Start with a real business problem, not the technology. Pick something painful and measurable, whether that is revenue leakage, slow billing cycles, poor resource allocation, or uncertainty around the return on AI investments, and solve it all the way through.&nbsp;

Leaders also need to be honest about the quality of their underlying data. You cannot automate a process you do not understand, and you cannot measure improvement without a reliable baseline.&nbsp;

The winners will not necessarily be the firms running the most AI pilots. They will be the firms that know what success looks like, can measure it, and are willing to change how they operate.&nbsp;

4. What's next for your organization, and where do you see the greatest opportunities to innovate?&nbsp;

Time is the foundation of everything we do at Laurel. How an organization spends its time tells you how the business actually operates. We’ve taken the foundation we built for timekeeping and expanded into a broader Work Intelligence platform.&nbsp;

We often say time is the supply chain of a professional services firm. Once you understand how that supply chain actually works, you can begin answering much bigger questions: What did the work cost? Where is AI creating leverage? How should teams be staffed? Which workflows should be automated? What should an agent do next?&nbsp;

The next opportunity is turning that ground truth into action. That means giving leaders a real-time view of how work creates value, while making that intelligence available across the systems they already use. Partnerships are a major part of that strategy. The more effectively Laurel can connect with trusted platforms like SurePoint, the more useful that intelligence becomes.&nbsp;

5. How do you see AI and automation changing the way your customers operate over the next few years?&nbsp;

AI will move from assisting with individual tasks to completing increasingly complex workflows. But to do that reliably, agents need context. They need to understand how work actually gets done inside an organization, what good looks like, what systems are involved, and what happened before.&nbsp;

We will see more specialized agents handling well-defined, end-to-end processes. The limiting factor will not simply be the intelligence of the models. It will be whether firms can give those models the right enterprise context and ground truth to operate reliably.&nbsp;

When firms trust AI with the repeatable tasks, the hours left over go to the judgment, the relationships, and the expertise that only a person can bring. Making time for that brilliance is why we built this.&nbsp;

The firms building that foundation now will be in the best position to move from experimenting with AI to actually redesigning how work gets done.&nbsp;

6. What made partnering with SurePoint a natural fit?&nbsp;

SurePoint has built deep relationships with law firms and earned the trust that comes with supporting systems at the core of how those firms operate. When we think about Laurel's partner ecosystem, we look for organizations that bring both complementary technology and real credibility with customers. SurePoint does both, which made the partnership a great decision for us.&nbsp;

The fit is also very practical. We are not asking firms to rip and replace the systems they trust. Laurel works alongside platforms like SurePoint, capturing how work happens across the firm's digital environment and turning that activity into intelligence that can make those core systems even more valuable.&nbsp;

Ultimately, the best technology ecosystems make the customer's existing investments work better together. That is what makes this partnership exciting for us.&nbsp;

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