A 28-attorney litigation firm with offices in downtown Pittsburgh and a satellite in Cranberry Township came to us with a familiar problem. Associates were quietly pasting deposition excerpts into a free chatbot to summarize them. The managing partner had just read an opinion from another jurisdiction sanctioning a lawyer for a hallucinated citation, and the firm's largest insurance-defense client had sent a 14-page outside counsel guideline update with new language about generative AI disclosure and client data handling.
The partners didn't want to ban AI — they had already seen the productivity gains. They wanted AI consulting for law firms that understood both the technology and the duties of confidentiality, competence, and supervision under the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct. They called us because their managed IT was already running on PGH Networks, and they needed an advisor who could move from policy to working tooling without a six-month consulting engagement.
The Challenge: A Downtown Pittsburgh Litigation Firm Under Pressure
The firm faced three pressures at once. First, shadow AI: at least four associates and two paralegals were using consumer ChatGPT accounts on personal devices, with no logging and no data-handling agreement. Second, client mandates: two institutional clients now required written AI-use disclosures and prohibited training on their matter data. Third, competitive pressure — a regional competitor was openly marketing AI-assisted document review to the same insurance-defense buyers.
Banning AI would have pushed the same behavior further into the shadows; the real job was to give attorneys a sanctioned path that was actually faster than the unsanctioned one.
Compounding the problem, the firm's document management system, time-and-billing platform, and e-discovery review tool were all from different vendors, each with its own AI add-on pitch. The partners couldn't tell which were genuinely useful, which created new confidentiality exposure, and which were repackaging the same underlying model with a markup.
How It Was Solved: A Staged AI Consulting Engagement for the Law Firm
We ran the engagement in three stages over roughly ten weeks.
Stage one — assessment and policy. We inventoried every AI-touching tool already in use (sanctioned and not), mapped data flows against the firm's existing confidentiality obligations, and drafted an AI Acceptable Use Policy specific to legal practice. The policy addressed Rule 1.1 competence, Rule 1.6 confidentiality, Rule 5.1/5.3 supervision, and the disclosure language the firm's two largest clients now required. It was reviewed by the firm's general counsel before rollout.
TL;DR: Effective AI consulting for law firms is not a tool recommendation — it is a closed loop of policy, tenant configuration, attorney training, and supervision evidence that survives a client audit.
Stage two — sanctioned tooling. Rather than adding a new platform, we configured the Microsoft 365 tenant the firm already owned: Copilot with commercial data protection, tightened SharePoint permissions so Copilot couldn't surface matter files across ethical walls, and a private workspace for drafting and summarization that kept prompts and outputs inside the firm's tenant. For deposition and discovery summarization, we evaluated the AI features already bundled in their review platform and turned on only the ones whose contracts confirmed no training on firm data.
Stage three — training and supervision. We ran two 90-minute working sessions — one for attorneys, one for paralegals and staff — using the firm's own redacted matters as practice material. We then set up a monthly review where a designated partner samples AI-assisted work product, which doubles as the supervision evidence the firm can show clients and, if it ever comes to it, a court.
Outcomes: What Changed in 90 Days
By the end of the quarter, shadow AI use had effectively stopped — not because of a ban, but because the sanctioned path was faster. Associates were using the tenant-protected tools for first-pass deposition summaries and research memos, with a documented attorney-review step before anything left the firm. The firm responded to both institutional clients' AI questionnaires with specific, accurate answers instead of hedged ones, and won an expanded panel assignment from one of them the following quarter.
Just as important, the partners stopped getting cold-pitched by every vendor with an "AI for lawyers" SKU. They had a framework to evaluate new tools in an afternoon instead of a quarter.
Who This Is For
This work fits Pittsburgh-area firms of roughly 10 to 150 attorneys — solo and very small firms usually need something lighter, and AmLaw 200 firms have in-house capacity. We work with litigation, corporate, IP, and estates practices across Allegheny, Butler, Washington, and Westmoreland counties, including firms in the Strip District, Southside, Wexford, and Greensburg. If your firm handles healthcare matters under HIPAA, defense work touching CMMC-regulated clients, or financial services under GLBA, the confidentiality and data-residency questions get sharper, and we account for that in the assessment.
What's Included in an Engagement
A typical AI consulting engagement for law firms covers: an inventory of current AI use (sanctioned and shadow), a written AI use policy aligned to the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct and your client outside-counsel guidelines, configuration of your existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenant for protected AI use, evaluation of practice-specific AI features in your DMS and e-discovery platforms, attorney and staff training using your own redacted materials, and a documented supervision and audit process. Where useful, we also help draft the client-facing disclosure language your matters now require.
Why PGH Networks
We are a Pittsburgh-based MSP — not a national consultancy parachuting in, and not a law-firm-only boutique that hands off the IT work. The same team that secures your firewalls, runs your backups, and answers your help-desk tickets also runs the AI advisory. That matters because most of the meaningful AI risk in a law firm lives in tenant configuration, identity, and data permissions — exactly the surface area your MSP already touches. Our service area covers the Pittsburgh metro within 75 miles of 15220, including Cranberry, Monroeville, Robinson, Washington, and Beaver County.
Takeaway and Next Step
If your firm is somewhere on the spectrum between "we've banned it" and "we have no idea what associates are doing," you are not behind — you are where most Pittsburgh firms are right now. The firms pulling ahead are the ones treating AI as a governed workflow, not a tool purchase.
To start, we offer a scoped two-week AI readiness assessment for law firms, fixed-fee, with a written report your partners can act on. Call PGH Networks at the number on this site or use the contact form to schedule a 30-minute call with our legal advisory team.