The work is rigorous. The fee process often is not. How scattered rate cards, email counters, and late realization reviews create leakage.
In many firms, the path from an RFP to an accepted fee still runs through three tools that were never designed to talk to each other: a scoping spreadsheet, a proposal deck, and an email thread.
Each handoff loses context. Staffing assumptions drift. Margin floors get negotiated away without finance seeing the round. Realization reviews arrive months later - after the leakage is already booked.
Pricing intelligence means collapsing that path into one continuous flow: scope from the matter as described, price from comparable firm history, propose in a branded artifact, and negotiate with an attributable log.
The firms that win commercially are not the ones with the flashiest AI demos. They are the ones whose fee process is as disciplined as their legal work.