Less searching and drafting, more of the week billed.
Your precedents, first drafts and time capture, handled by AI your partners sign off. NZ-hosted, beside iManage, SharePoint and Xero, live in weeks.
Ideal if your fee-earners lose hours a week to searching and drafting, and the top-tier firms are already rolling out AI.
- Client data never trains a model
- Every draft reviewed before it leaves
- Beside iManage, SharePoint and Xero
The big firms are spending on AI. You can't spend what they spend.
Bell Gully put Harvey in front of 200-plus lawyers in 2025, and KPMG found 40% of NZ CEOs planning to put a fifth of their budget into AI. Meanwhile the Law Society says the lawyer stays responsible for every AI-assisted output, and client data must never go into a public tool. The pressure is to move now, and the risk is doing it with a chatbot nobody governs. RIVER builds the governed version, sized for a mid-tier firm.
Your firm today
With RIVER
A fee-earner spends 5-8 hours a week hunting precedents across iManage, SharePoint and email.
Past advice, precedents and know-how answered in seconds, sourced to the document.
Engagement letters and advice memos start from a blank template, and take 30-40% of billable time.
A first draft written from the matter and your past work, for the partner to review and sign.
Time gets recorded days later and rounded down, and 10-15% of recoverable revenue goes with it.
Time entries drafted from the day's work, for the fee-earner to confirm.
On your data, hosted in Aotearoa, and never used to train a model.
Contract review is manual, and how thorough it is depends on who picks it up.
Risk clauses, missing protections and off-policy terms flagged in a brief for professional review.
When a partner retires or an associate moves to Sydney, what they knew goes with them.
How the firm works and what each client expects, captured and searchable by every team member.
Your partners keep the judgement and the signature. The platform takes the searching, the drafting and the admin.
What AI actually does here. Grounded in the work, not the hype.
Precedents found, first drafts written, contracts flagged, time captured and the partner pack assembled - the platform does the routine work and leaves the advice to your people.
Find it, then draft it
The two biggest drains on a fee-earner's week first: finding what the firm already knows, and getting the first draft down. Both prepared for a partner to review.
What did we advise on restructure consultation timeframes for a 15-person team?
Three prior matters. The most recent advice memo recommended a 2-4 week consultation window under the Employment Relations Act 2000, and noted a 48-hour period was found inadequate at that scale.
Answers only from matters this user is cleared to see.
Then the review and the time
On that foundation, the two places revenue leaks: a contract read that depends on who picks it up, and time that gets recorded days later and rounded down.
A brief for the reviewing solicitor, not a decision.
Then the running of the firm
The partner meeting and the board pack: assembled from the papers, the decisions tracked from one meeting to the next, and the know-how captured so it stays when people leave.
Partner meeting · Q1 pack · 28 pages
You don't start from scratch. We tailor what's proven to your firm.
RIVER is over 100 prebuilt modules, tailored to your DMS, your practice system and your practice areas in weeks - built to sit beside iManage, SharePoint and Xero, not replace them.
Everything a client’s procurement or risk team asks for is in our Trust Centre
- Built to the NZ Law Society's generative AI guidance and cloud computing guidelines, and to the AML/CFT Phase 2 obligations DIA supervises.
- Sits beside iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint, Aderant, Elite 3E and Xero - connected, never ripped out.
- Every draft, flag and time entry is reviewed by your people before it counts, and client data never trains a model.
Start with one module. Prove it, then grow.
One outcome live in weeks - the knowledge base, or first-draft communication - then add the next when it's earning its place.
The investment
One module live - the knowledge base and first-draft communication.
Or run it on the Retainer from $5,000 a month. If something isn’t delivered in a month, that month is free.
Every professional services engagement includes
- A discovery that agrees your first billable win
- Partner review built into every workflow
- NZ-hosted, aligned to the NZ Law Society cloud and generative AI guidance
- Connection to the DMS and practice system you run
- The security documentation a client's procurement team asks for
- Your data, your IP, yours to keep
The questions people ask when they’re ready to move.
It sits beside them, through their APIs - nothing is replaced. Your DMS stays the system of record; the platform reads from it and writes back only what a partner approves.
- iManage, NetDocuments and SharePoint for documents.
- Aderant, Elite 3E, WorkflowMax and Xero for matters, time and billing.
- Microsoft 365 for email and Teams, where most of the firm already lives.
- Most integrations land in weeks, not a replacement project.
Client data stays in Aotearoa, in your environment, and it never trains a model. The platform runs in your cloud or NZ-hosted for you, which is what the NZ Law Society's generative AI guidance and its cloud computing guidelines ask of a firm.
- Information barriers between matters are held at the platform level, by practice group and role.
- Everything is encrypted at rest and in transit, with a full audit log of who asked what.
- The Trust Centre carries the detail your clients' procurement teams will ask for.
No. Every draft, review and recommendation goes through a professional before it counts. The NZLS guidance is clear that the lawyer stays responsible for AI-assisted work, and the platform is built around that.
- A draft is prepared for review, and nothing leaves the firm until it's signed.
- A contract flag is a brief for your judgement, not a decision.
- Time entries are drafted for the fee-earner to confirm, never posted on their behalf.
You may well do both. Harvey and Copilot are tools for the individual, on the vendor's terms. RIVER builds on your matters, your document system and your information barriers, and it sits beside whichever tool your people already use.
If a licence is all your firm needs, we will say so. The Readiness Check is the ten-minute way to find out.
Weeks, not quarters. The Starter module goes live in weeks including discovery, build and testing; a fuller rollout with a DMS integration takes a little longer.
Yes. The pattern is the same wherever the product is expertise on the clock. Precedents become past reports and technical standards, the engagement letter becomes the proposal, and the partner pack becomes the board pack. The AML/CFT Phase 2 obligations reach accountants too, and Engineering NZ's 40 hours of CPD a year are as easy to track as a lawyer's. It's built for firms from 50 to 500 staff.
Easy to start. Fast to prove. Built to scale.
Tell us about your firm, and we’ll take it from there. Prefer to look first? Ask Moana, or take the free Readiness Check.
Ideas from the field.
Guides and research from a team that ships it.
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Teams like yours, in their own words.
A decade of work, across health, sport, finance and the public good.
RIVER learnt our business inside out, and found growth we hadn't seen ourselves. That is what changed our ability to scale.
Jay HarrisonFounder, Edison Health · 2022We crunch through complex data to generate insights, and RIVER made it simple to work through, while keeping everyone aligned on our core value proposition.
Alex OsbornCTO, trev · 2024Our business runs on what RIVER built. They have been central to our technology and our growth, and it keeps driving results.
Mark BramwellDirector, Commercial Realty · 2024RIVER listens, understands what we actually need, and gives us our time back. That is what a good partnership looks like.
Tony NaiduDevelopment Manager, Auckland Badminton Association · 2025RIVER helped us validate our market and launch our platform, and they haven't stopped since. They've been with us every step.
Mike CollinsFounder, iMatch Sport · 2025RIVER has been a trusted partner from the start, and they exceeded what we expected. We're already seeing the difference their work is making.
Ellen LekkaProgramme Specialist, UNESCO & SVSG · 2025The team at RIVER has been an incredible partner from day one. Their ongoing support helped make our success possible.
Scott TownshendFounder, trev · 2022RIVER approached every detail with care. Every decision was made with consideration and purpose.
Daemon CoyleGM, Mental Health Foundation · 2021Our new brand is bold and effective, and customers love it. The website has driven a real increase in leads.
Marcus SinGM, Cleanly · 2020We have always been ambitious about what our site should do, and RIVER take on the hardest parts of it. They make it happen, no matter how complex.
Chris HartFounder, Real Groovy · 2021RIVER are responsive and always ready to adapt. We have never had to chase them, and their support has been critical as our needs changed.
Supriya Kulkarni-PadhyeM&E Coordinator, Oceania Football Confederation · 2020We love our new brand. It reflects who we are as a team and resonates with our customers. Thank you for bringing our vision to life.
Tracy BergeGM, Greentree Advisers · 2021