Knowledge assistant · Small business (10 to 49 staff) · Professional services
Internal knowledge assistant for a small law firm
An internal assistant that lets staff at a small law firm ask questions of its own documents and get answers with links to the source, respecting who may see what. Precedents and know-how notes are the collections, with matter files kept separate.
Illustrative cost
£10,000 to £31,000 ex VAT
- Typical
- £17,000
- Duration
- About 8 weeks
- Effort
- 23 to 41 days
Illustrative estimate, not a quote. Real prices vary.
Worked out from UK freelance contractor day rates in job adverts, with no consultancy or agency margin added. Consultancies and agencies usually charge more.
Source: IT Jobs Watch. Rates read on ; costs computed on .
What is included
- Ingestion of agreed document collections
- Retrieval-augmented generation with citations to the source document
- Permissions that mirror the document store
- An evaluation set and accuracy testing
- Pilot with one team, then rollout
Deliverables
- A working assistant for the pilot group
- Evaluation results
- Runbook and admin guide
- Rollout plan
Assumptions
- Documents are in one or two stores (for example SharePoint or Google Drive)
- The client provides the model subscription
- A pilot group of 10 to 30 users
Not included
- Scanning paper records
- Answers to customers
- Model and hosting fees
Project plan
Phases run one after another, about 8 weeks in all.
| Phase | Weeks | Main tasks |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | 1 | Choose collections and users; Permissions review; Agree success measures |
| Data preparation and ingestion | 2 | Connect sources; Clean and chunk documents; Index |
| Build | 3 | Retrieval tuning; Prompting and citations; User interface and sign-in |
| Evaluation | 1 | Build the test question set; Measure accuracy and refusals |
| Pilot and rollout | 1 | Pilot training; Feedback fixes; Rollout plan |
Who does the work
Person-days per role in each phase, low and high effort.
| Phase | Role | Days (low to high) |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | Business analyst | 2 to 3 days |
| Discovery | AI architect | 1 to 2 days |
| Data preparation and ingestion | Data engineer | 3 to 6 days |
| Data preparation and ingestion | Generative AI (LLM) engineer | 2 to 3 days |
| Build | Generative AI (LLM) engineer | 6 to 12 days |
| Build | AI engineer | 2 to 4 days |
| Evaluation | Generative AI (LLM) engineer | 2 to 3 days |
| Evaluation | Test engineer | 2 to 3 days |
| Pilot and rollout | Project manager | 2 to 3 days |
| Pilot and rollout | Change manager | 1 to 2 days |
How the cost adds up
| Role | Low (days × 25th percentile) | Typical (days × median) | High (days × 90th percentile) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business analyst | 2 × £425 = £850 | 2.5 × £500 = £1,250 | 3 × £662 = £1,986 |
| AI architect | 1 × £549 = £549 | 1.5 × £650 = £975 | 2 × £850 = £1,700 |
| Data engineer | 3 × £425 = £1,275 | 4.5 × £500 = £2,250 | 6 × £688 = £4,128 |
| Generative AI (LLM) engineer | 10 × £417 = £4,170 | 14 × £543 = £7,603 | 18 × £825 = £14,850 |
| AI engineer | 2 × £488 = £976 | 3 × £589 = £1,767 | 4 × £863 = £3,452 |
| Test engineer | 2 × £350 = £700 | 2.5 × £438 = £1,095 | 3 × £588 = £1,764 |
| Project manager | 2 × £451 = £902 | 2.5 × £540 = £1,350 | 3 × £714 = £2,142 |
| Change manager | 1 × £458 = £458 | 1.5 × £525 = £788 | 2 × £711 = £1,422 |
| Total, rounded | £10,000 | £17,000 | £31,000 |
How these estimates are worked out
Effort: for each phase we estimate how many days each role works, as a low and a high case. These are our estimates for a typical project of this kind, not measured data.
Rates: each role's daily rate comes from UK contract job adverts over the last six months, as published by IT Jobs Watch. These are freelance contractor rates as advertised, not what was paid, and not what a consultancy or agency charges.
Low end: the low-effort days at each role's 25th-percentile rate. We use the 25th percentile, not the 10th, because the lowest effort at the cheapest rates gives a floor few buyers would ever meet.
Typical: the mid-point between low and high effort, at each role's median rate.
High end: the high-effort days at each role's 90th-percentile rate.
Totals are rounded to the nearest £500 below £10,000 and the nearest £1,000 above, and exclude VAT. Phases run one after another.
Not included:
- Software licences, model and hosting fees
- Travel and expenses
- Your own staff's time
- A consultancy's or agency's margin, overheads and risk
Real prices vary with the supplier, the state of your data and systems, how much of the work your own team does, where the work happens and how much risk the supplier carries. Consultancies and agencies usually charge more than these contractor rates, and a fixed price usually costs more than time and materials because the supplier takes the risk.
Sources
Source: IT Jobs Watch: UK contract job adverts quoting a daily rate, 6 months to 15 November 2026. Each role's page was read on . Published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
| Role | IT Jobs Watch page | Rates quoted | 25th percentile | Median | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business analyst | Business Analyst | 1,394 | £425 | £500 | £662 |
| AI architect | Artificial Intelligence Architect | 148 | £549 | £650 | £850 |
| Data engineer | Data Engineer | 1,275 | £425 | £500 | £688 |
| Generative AI (LLM) engineerIT Jobs Watch has no "LLM Engineer" or "Prompt Engineer" title with daily rates; mapped to the closest title, Gen AI Engineer. | Gen AI Engineer | 30 | £417 | £543 | £825 |
| AI engineer | Artificial Intelligence Engineer | 384 | £488 | £589 | £863 |
| Test engineer | Test Engineer | 245 | £350 | £438 | £588 |
| Project manager | Project Manager | 1,226 | £451 | £540 | £714 |
| Change manager | Change Manager | 193 | £458 | £525 | £711 |