Guest Blog ft. Vivian Xu
Product Officer at Matteroom
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?
AI is creating a lot of opportunity in legal right now. The first wave was focused on helping people create and process content faster, whether that was drafting, research, or summarization. We are now starting to see the conversation shift toward how AI can help firms run the business better.
That is where I think the next big opportunity is. Firms are looking at how they can use AI to improve decision-making, automate processes, understand profitability, and get a clearer picture of how work is actually being done across the firm.
The challenge is that all of that depends on having good data. If important information is still being captured manually, or not captured at all, there are limits to what AI can tell you.
At Matteroom, that is an area we are very focused on. We want to make it easier for firms to capture that information and use AI and automation to get more value from it. Our focus is helping firms build that foundation so they can make better business decisions, operate more effectively, and take full advantage of what the next generation of legal AI has to offer.
2. What trends are having the greatest impact on your customers today?
First, firms are moving beyond looking at AI simply as a productivity tool and are starting to view it as a strategic business capability. The question is no longer whether AI can help draft a document. It is how AI can help improve profitability, efficiency, and service delivery.
Second, firms are becoming increasingly data driven. Leaders want greater visibility into operational performance, resource utilization, client profitability, and workflow efficiency. They want insights that help guide strategy rather than simply reporting historical results.
Third, clients continue to raise their expectations around efficiency, transparency, and billing compliance. Law firms are under pressure to deliver more value while maintaining profitability.
These trends all point to the same conclusion: firms need better visibility into the work being performed throughout the organization. The firms that can capture, understand, and use that information effectively will be in a much stronger position to compete and grow.
3. What advice would you give to leaders looking to drive growth and innovation in today’s environment?
Make decisions based on data, not assumptions. That sounds simple, but many organizations still make important business decisions using incomplete information because they do not have enough visibility into how work is performed.
One area where this becomes especially important is time and activity capture. Most firms primarily focus on billable time, but billable time alone does not tell the full story of the business. Non-billable activities often provide critical insight into client acquisition costs, business development efforts, training investments, operational efficiency, and true profitability. If firms only analyze a portion of the work being performed, they risk making decisions based on only a fraction of the information available to them.
I’d also encourage leaders to view AI as a strategic capability rather than a standalone technology initiative. AI is most valuable when integrated into everyday business processes and supported by reliable data. The organizations that succeed will be those that invest in creating a strong data foundation first and then leverage AI to turn that information into actionable intelligence.
4. What’s next for your organization, and where do you see the greatest opportunities to innovate?
We believe the greatest opportunity lies at the intersection of AI, automation, and operational intelligence.
The legal industry has already seen substantial innovation in content creation and knowledge work. The next major opportunity is helping firms better understand, manage, and optimize how work moves throughout the organization.
Our focus is on helping firms capture and use operational data more effectively so they can improve decision-making, enhance compliance, reduce administrative burden, and increase profitability.
We are continuing to invest in technologies that automate activity capture, generate intelligent recommendations, improve compliance workflows, and provide deeper operational insights. At the same time, we are committed to making these enterprise-grade capabilities accessible to firms of all sizes.
Innovation should not be reserved only for the largest firms. Our mission is to continue lowering barriers to adoption while maintaining the security, scalability, and reliability that law firms expect from enterprise platforms.
5. How do you see AI and automation changing the way your customers operate over the next few years?
The first wave of legal AI focused on creating content faster. The next wave will focus on helping firms operate smarter. As AI continues to mature, we expect it to become embedded in everyday workflows, helping firms automate routine tasks, identify risks, surface insights, and support better decision-making across departments.
One important shift will be moving from manual data entry to automated data capture. Before AI can deliver meaningful intelligence, organizations need accurate and comprehensive information. You can’t analyze information that was never captured in the first place.
Timekeeping is a good example. For decades, firms have relied on professionals to manually reconstruct their day and enter time. The challenge is that people naturally forget things. If an activity is never recorded, it becomes invisible to leadership. A CFO can’t measure it. A practice leader can’t optimize it. And the professional who forgot it may not even realize it was missed.
More importantly, firms should not focus exclusively on billable activity. Non-billable work often provides critical insight into client acquisition costs, internal operations, resource allocation, and overall firm performance. When organizations overlook non-billable work, they may be making decisions using only part of the picture.
Over the next several years, AI will increasingly help firms capture the full picture of work being performed. Better data leads to better insights, better insights lead to better decisions, and better decisions ultimately drive better business outcomes.
6. What made partnering with SurePoint a natural fit?
One of the things we admire most about SurePoint is their commitment to customer choice. Law firms have diverse needs, priorities, and technology strategies. The most successful firms are often those that can build a technology ecosystem that aligns with their unique goals rather than being constrained by a one-size-fits-all approach.
SurePoint has embraced an open partnership philosophy that allows firms to select the solutions that create the most value for their organization while continuing to leverage their existing investments. We believe that flexibility ultimately benefits customers because it gives them the freedom to choose the capabilities that matter most to their business.
Our organizations also share a belief that technology should solve real business problems and deliver measurable financial outcomes. SurePoint provides the operational and financial foundation that law firms rely on to run their business, while our timekeeping AI and OCG compliance intelligence platform helps firms strengthen revenue capture, billing compliance, and realization.
MIRA, our Timekeeping AI, helps firms ensure more valuable work becomes captured time by reducing missed billable activity and improving timekeeping completeness. KOMOKU, our compliance intelligence platform, helps firms navigate increasingly complex Outside Counsel Guidelines and billing requirements, from matter intake through invoice validation, helping to reduce write-downs, invoice rejections, and revenue leakage.
Whether a firm is focused on improving time capture, strengthening billing compliance, or both, our partnership with SurePoint helps firms optimize the entire revenue lifecycle, connecting work performed to revenue realized through integrated technology and streamlined processes.
7. What legal processes are still overly dependent on human effort, and where do you see AI having the greatest impact?
One question we often ask law firm leaders is: Do you want your attorneys spending time perfecting time-entry narratives, or practicing law, serving clients, and generating revenue?
Despite decades of investment in legal technology, timekeeping remains heavily dependent on human memory. Professionals are expected to reconstruct their day, remember every client interaction, and create billing narratives after the work has already been performed. Yet the quality and completeness of those entries directly impact realization, profitability, and client satisfaction.
We see AI having a significant impact on this challenge. Rather than requiring attorneys to act as historians of their own day, solutions like MIRA can help capture work as it happens, organize related activities, and assist with generating more complete and accurate narratives. The attorney remains in control, but with much less administrative burden.
This is where the partnership between SurePoint and Matteroom becomes particularly powerful. SurePoint provides the financial and billing foundation firms rely on to run their business, while Matteroom helps ensure more of the valuable work performed by professionals makes its way into the system accurately and efficiently.
The goal goes beyond better time entries. We want to help attorneys focus on practicing law while improving revenue capture and giving firms better visibility into the work being performed.
8. Where do you see firms generating the greatest return from AI investments over the next few years?
We believe the greatest returns will come from AI solutions that remove friction from the revenue lifecycle. For many firms, one of the most persistent challenges is managing increasingly complex client billing requirements and Outside Counsel Guidelines. Billing teams spend countless hours reviewing invoices, interpreting client requirements, and analyzing their impact. Even with strong financial systems in place, firms can still experience write-downs, invoice rejections, delayed payments, and revenue leakage when compliance issues are identified too late in the process.
This is where we see AI creating measurable business value. Solutions like KOMOKU can help firms analyze client billing requirements, identify potential compliance risks earlier, and create greater consistency throughout the billing lifecycle. Instead of discovering issues after an invoice is submitted, firms can proactively address them before they impact realization.
Together, SurePoint and Matteroom help firms strengthen operational efficiency and financial performance.
SurePoint provides the billing and financial backbone of the firm, while Matteroom helps firms navigate the growing complexity surrounding billing compliance and client requirements. The result is fewer surprises, reduced administrative effort, stronger realization, and a smoother path from work performed to revenue collected. Learn more about Matteroom
