Ballard Spahr saves $2M in unplanned losses and cuts research time 60% with Azure OpenAI

Ballard Spahr’s lawyers and staff spent significant nonbillable time crafting data-driven proposals for potential clients, driving lengthy research cycles and administrative overhead. Reducing those unplanned losses was seen as a direct path to higher attorney efficiency and firm profitability, while still keeping firm and client data confidential.

Working with Microsoft partner Neudesic, the firm built Ballard X-Ray—a large-scale Azure OpenAI–powered repository and interactive agent that stores and searches thousands of RFP-related documents (up to 2,500 per X-Ray) and lets lawyers chat over that data set. It also launched Ask Ellis, a generative AI chatbot on Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Services that helps lawyers and staff draft emails and other communications with pre-built prompts.

The firm is saving an estimated $2 million in unplanned losses with Ask Ellis and Ballard X-Ray. Partners and business professionals are saving approximately two hours per proposal response, and nonbillable research time has decreased by 60%. Ballard X-Ray also shortened RFP response times from weeks to days.

• • Custom, compliance-first generative AI on the Microsoft Cloud can cut nonbillable research and proposal work without exposing client data.
• • Pairing a searchable firm knowledge repository (Ballard X-Ray) with a drafting chatbot (Ask Ellis) multiplies gains across research and communications.
• • Early partnership with a Microsoft SI (Neudesic) helped the firm move from use-case prioritization to production tools quickly.