What does a first pilot look like for a client and matter opening agent?

A professional services group is building an agent to open client matters once an engagement has been approved by a partner. The engineering lead and the risk manager meet MirrorFirm to scope a pilot.

They choose one path: engagement approval ENG-1180 becomes a client record, a matter, a billing arrangement and a conflict-check task. They agree on four record types and six tool actions. The case mix includes:

- new clients with clean checks - existing clients opening a second matter - a related-party name that should trigger conflict review - an engagement missing the fee basis - a matter type that policy says requires partner sign-off before billing is enabled

They request a small training split, a validation split and a held-out set of cases they will not use to adjust prompts. The answer key lists expected records and handovers for each case. Two reviewers, a senior practice manager and a security analyst, are named to inspect samples for realism and disclosure risk.

After the first release, the team runs its agent through a harness and reads results by failure mode. Matching works, but the agent invents a fee basis when one is missing. They change the case mix to include more incomplete engagements and request a regenerated release.

**What it teaches:**

- Narrow scope produces readable results. - A held-out set protects the evaluation. - Reviewers from engineering, risk and the business each catch different problems.