MLT Aikins Adopts AI Timekeeping, Signals Broader Legal Industry Shift

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – April 29, 2026 – MLT Aikins LLP, one of Canada’s largest and most established law firms, has announced a firm-wide deployment of Laurel, an AI-powered work intelligence platform designed to automate timekeeping. The implementation spans all seven of the firm’s offices across Western Canada, marking a significant strategic investment in technology aimed at enhancing operational efficiency, reducing revenue leakage, and providing deeper business insights.

The move by the full-service firm, which employs over 350 lawyers, follows a rigorous pilot program and signals a growing momentum within the legal sector to embrace artificial intelligence for core business functions. By automating one of the most tedious aspects of legal practice, MLT Aikins is positioning itself at the forefront of a technological transformation that promises to reshape not only how law firms operate but also how lawyers spend their valuable time.

Beyond the Billable Hour: A New Era of Legal Efficiency

For decades, manual timekeeping has been a necessary but deeply inefficient part of the legal profession. The process is prone to human error, relies on memory, and often results in significant revenue leakage from unrecorded activities. Industry studies consistently show that law firms can fail to capture a substantial portion of billable work, with some estimates suggesting that automated systems can increase captured billable time by 15-25%.

Laurel and similar AI platforms aim to solve this problem by operating passively in the background, automatically capturing a lawyer's work across various applications—from drafting documents and writing emails to participating in video calls. The AI then categorizes these activities and generates detailed, compliant time entry narratives. This automation is expected to help MLT Aikins capture previously lost billable hours, which vendors in the space claim can lead to revenue increases between 4% and 11%.

Tamara Sinclair, Chief Operating Officer at MLT Aikins, highlighted the dual benefits of efficiency and insight. “We have been searching for a timekeeping solution that makes it easier for our lawyers to record time, capturing and structuring work data automatically, and from anywhere and on any device,” she stated. “We are excited to give our lawyers and client-facing team members access to this technology and to use the insights it generates to serve our clients better.”

This shift addresses a core operational challenge while also strengthening client relationships through more consistent and timely invoicing. By ensuring that time entries are not only captured but also compliant with complex client billing guidelines, the firm aims to reduce write-downs and billing disputes, leading to faster payment cycles.

Reclaiming Time: How AI is Changing the Lawyer's Workflow

The impact of this technology extends beyond the firm's balance sheet to the daily life of its legal professionals. The administrative burden of reconstructing a day’s work for a timesheet is a well-known pain point for lawyers, consuming valuable hours that could be dedicated to complex legal analysis or client engagement. AI timekeeping platforms claim to reduce this daily administrative task from hours per week to mere minutes a day.

By alleviating the mental load of constant time tracking, these tools allow lawyers to focus more deeply on high-value work. The technology functions as a digital assistant, creating a comprehensive log of activities that the lawyer can then review, edit, and approve. This represents a fundamental shift from active, manual tracking to passive, automated capture with human oversight.

However, the adoption of such systems is not without its nuances. While vendors promise a seamless experience, successful implementation hinges on attorney buy-in and effective change management. Legal tech experts note that these platforms are powerful assistants, not complete replacements for human judgment. They cannot, for instance, capture an impromptu hallway conversation or the thoughts formulated during a walk. Lawyers must still engage with the system to verify entries and add context that the AI cannot infer, ensuring the final record is complete and accurate.

Privacy is another key consideration. As these platforms monitor digital activity to function, firms must ensure robust data security protocols are in place to maintain confidentiality and build trust among their legal teams. The successful rollout at MLT Aikins suggests these concerns were thoroughly addressed during its extensive evaluation process.

A Crowded Field: The Race to Build Legal Work Intelligence

While Laurel bills itself as the world's first Work Intelligence platform, it operates in an increasingly competitive and sophisticated market. The legal tech landscape is populated with a growing number of AI-driven solutions, including Clio Duo, BigHand SmartTime, and WiseTime, all vying to help professional services firms optimize their most valuable resource: time.

This competitive environment underscores the maturity of the technology and the urgency firms feel to adopt it. The decision by a major firm like MLT Aikins to select and deploy a single platform across all its offices is a significant market event. Emil Dyrvig, CRO of Laurel, noted the thoroughness of the firm’s selection process. “MLT Aikins ran a world-class evaluation process, putting Laurel through its paces across offices, practice areas, and user types before committing,” he said. “That kind of diligence is exactly what sets the leading firms apart, and their decision to deploy Laurel across their Canadian offices is a signal of the direction the market is moving.”

This trend highlights that law firms are no longer just experimenting with AI but are making substantial, strategic investments in proven platforms that can deliver a clear return on investment through both increased revenue and enhanced operational capacity.

From Time Tracking to Strategy: The Data-Driven Future of Law

The true long-term value of adopting a work intelligence platform lies not just in automating an administrative task, but in the vast repository of data it creates. By capturing and structuring how every minute of work is invested, MLT Aikins gains a powerful analytical tool for making critical business decisions.

This data provides real-time visibility into matter profitability, team efficiency, and resource allocation. Firm leadership can identify which types of matters are most profitable, how work is distributed among associates, and where there may be opportunities for process improvement. These insights enable a more strategic approach to pricing, staffing, and overall business development, moving beyond intuition to data-driven management.

For MLT Aikins, this move is a foundational step toward building the data-centric law firm of the future. The insights gleaned from the platform will empower the firm to better understand its operations, anticipate client needs, and maintain a competitive edge in a market that increasingly values efficiency and transparency. This strategic adoption is less about replacing human lawyers and more about empowering them with the data-driven tools needed to thrive in an increasingly complex and competitive legal landscape.