How Egerton McAfee Chose an AI-Native Approach to Timekeeping

A cloud migration gave Egerton McAfee a rare chance to start over

For roughly a decade, Egerton McAfee used Intapp Time. Then, Egerton’s accounting system moved to the cloud. This migration gave Egerton the perfect opportunity to modernize its entire workflow.

For Jeff Ware, IT Director at Egerton, the timing lined up with changes he had been watching across the legal market.

Having used the on-premise version of Intapp Time for nearly a decade, Egerton’s choice was to either carry its existing process forward or capitalize on the moment to take a completely revolutionized approach to timekeeping. Egerton needed a tool that attorneys could adopt easily, that could support the firm’s billing requirements, and could integrate quickly with its new SurePoint environment.

In a fast-moving AI market, firms cannot afford lengthy implementation projects or tools that require workflows to be rebuilt before they start seeing results.

“PointOne said they could make it happen, and they actually delivered on that promise.”

Jeff Ware, IT Director, Egerton McAfee

A long-established Knoxville firm took a chance on a new partner because the team listened, built, and delivered.

Why Egerton chose PointOne to modernize timekeeping

Previously, attorneys managing both a 500-matter institutional client and a single local matter in the same day could become its own administrative job. For the finance team, it meant following up on incomplete time and waiting for entries to be ready for billing.

As Egerton prepared for its cloud migration, the firm considered both Intapp Cloud and PointOne. The team ultimately selected PointOne for its ease of use, functionality, and ability to meet the firm’s implementation requirements.

For Jeff, the decision came down to three things: a tool attorneys could learn quickly, a partner that could support Egerton’s billing needs, and an implementation team that could move quickly during a major systems transition.

“It’s literally just less than an hour of training and everybody pretty much knew what they needed to do.”

Jeff Ware, IT Director, Egerton McAfee

PointOne begins with the activity itself. It creates a record from the systems attorneys are already using across emails, calendars, documents, meetings, browsers, and desktop applications. Then, it uses that context to automatically draft ready-to-invoice and compliant entries. With PointOne, attorneys only need to review a draft before releasing it directly into the firm’s practice management system. The rollout allows a passive process that captures work as it happens and prepares contemporaneous entries for attorney review, which provides a more efficient and superior time entry creation process in comparison to legacy software systems.

The distinction was especially important for Egerton’s billing environment. For example, the firm needed the flexibility to handle a major institutional client billed to one general matter alongside more discrete client and matter work. It also needed task codes to appear only where a client required them, rather than creating unnecessary fields for every entry. PointOne could apply those requirements at the matter level and incorporate the firm’s billing rules directly into the timekeeping workflow, before an entry reached pre-bill review.

Finally, Jeff needed confidence that the team could make the integration work on the firm’s timeline. PointOne adjusted the workflow as the team worked through implementation details and changes, bringing the integration live on a tight schedule.

“PointOne was able to pivot and provide the solution needed to make it work, and we were able to get it up and running on a very tight schedule.”

Jeff Ware, IT Director, Egerton McAfee