What does client onboarding cost your firm?
Not the compliance check. The work around it: asking for documents, chasing them, checking them and filing them. Model it for your firm, then see what changes on Letro.
Modelled estimate from the assumptions below, not a measured customer result. Letro Cloud costs about £1,300 a year on these inputs. Private AI is in preview.
What onboarding costs you today, and on Letro
Enter your firm on the left. The comparison updates as you type.
Time per onboarding (our assumptions, editable)
- Support staff
- Fee-earner
- Letro plan
- Saved
Firms choose Dedicated for isolation and the record, not for this saving alone.
Modelled estimate, not a measured result. Private AI is in preview.
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A 10-person firm
2 partners, 4 solicitors, 2 paralegals and 2 support staff. Mixed private-client and commercial work. 15 new clients a month.
15 × 3.25 hours = 48.75 hours a month, about six working days of combined staff time. At £28 and £150 an hour, £2,737.50 a month.
15 × 1.6 hours = 24 hours a month, £1,404 a month.
About 25 hours and £1,300 a month, before a Letro Cloud cost of about £1,300 a year for 10 seats.
Same firm, Swiss rates (CHF 70 support, CHF 300 fee earner): CHF 72'000 a year today, CHF 36'720 modelled on Letro, about CHF 35'000 back, before CHF 1'440 a year on Cloud.
Of the 297 hours, about 234 are support-staff time and 63 are fee-earner time. We count support time at what it costs and fee-earner time at the value you set. We do not assume freed support hours turn into billable work.
Describe your onboarding once. Private AI runs it
Write the process in plain words. Private AI turns it into a workflow that requests, chases, checks and files documents inside your encrypted Letro environment. Approvals and the onboarding decision stay with a person.
Animation: in the Letro app, a Private AI tab appears next to Desk. A workflow is described in plain words: check each client instruction against the mandate; over CHF 50,000, Compliance and the relationship manager both approve; then confirm to the client. Private AI drafts six steps and the workflow is switched on. Results shows a new instruction awaiting approval, and History opens a past run with its full audit trail. Approvals always stay with a person. Illustrative example with fictional names.
For every new client, request a passport, proof of address and source of funds. Chase every 3 days. Check each document is in date and the name matches. If anything is still missing after 10 days, tell the partner. Once the partner approves, confirm to the client and file everything to the matter.
- 01Request documentsPassport, proof of address and source of funds, requested in the client’s DossierPrivate AI
- 02Chase what’s missingA reminder every 3 days until everything is inPrivate AI
- 03Check each documentIn date, legible, and the name matches the clientPrivate AI
- 04Flag gapsAnything still missing after 10 days goes to the partnerPrivate AI
- 05Approve the clientThe partner reviews the file and signs offPerson
- 06Confirm and fileWelcome message to the client, documents filed to the matterPrivate AI
Run it, then argue with it
The model is deliberately simple so you can see every assumption. If your firm’s numbers are different, change them. The result is yours, not ours. If you would like to see onboarding running in a Dossier, book a demo.
The detailHow we built the model, where the time goes, and our sources
The method · Where the time goes today · What changes on Letro · What the number leaves out · Sources
Show the detailHide the detail
How we built the model
We did not ask firms how long onboarding takes. Most cannot say, because it is spread across inboxes, phone calls and the practice-management system. Instead we broke one onboarding into its tasks, put a time against each, and multiplied by what an hour costs.
Every input is visible and editable. If your firm is faster, the saving is smaller. If it is slower, the saving is bigger.
The model counts only the firm’s time. It does not count the client’s time, the matters that go cold while onboarding drags, or the risk of ID documents sitting in email. Those are real, and they are listed below, not in the number.
Support and paralegal time
A fully loaded hourly cost: salary plus employer on-costs, divided by productive hours.
Fee-earner time
An hour spent chasing a utility bill is an hour not billed. We default below guideline hourly rates, because not every freed hour becomes a billed hour. Set it to your own realised rate.
Where the time goes today
One onboarding, handled by email, phone and the practice-management system.
These are defaults. A conveyancing team with a strong intake process may be faster. A private-client team handling cross-border families will be slower.
What changes, and what does not
Private AI runs in a separate environment scoped to your organisation. Nothing is sent to a model vendor, and it is not used for training. The client needs no Letro account: they receive an emailed link to a temporary room, or join with a verified PostNumber if they have one.
We are not pretending it does
Your provider, your cost, your decision. Letro gets the documents to that step faster. It does not take the step.
Someone still decides whether the matter opens.
A client who takes 4 days to find a passport takes 4 days.
In the first week, it adds time rather than saving it.
What the number leaves out
Setup and habit change
Budget a month of lower efficiency.
Clients who refuse anything but email
Some will. The temporary room is one click, but one click is not zero.
Matters that die during a slow onboarding
We have no reliable figure. If you track it, add it.
Where the ID documents live afterwards
Today: in email, on phones, in downloads folders. On Letro: in an encrypted Dossier with a record of who saw what. That is a risk cost, not a time cost, and it is left out of this calculator on purpose.
The record itself
When a client says “I never sent you that”, the Dossier answers in seconds. Today it can take an afternoon.
Sources and assumptions
Letro Private AI is in preview. Letro does not perform AML, ID or sanctions checks. Figures on this page are modelled estimates, not customer results. Last reviewed 25 October 2026.