Harvey and CoCounsel are SaaS products. Your case files travel to their infrastructure. They are well-built products run by serious teams. They are also the wrong architecture for any matter you cannot ship to a vendor cloud.
Knight CTO builds AI that runs locally on the partner's own machine. Document processing, indexing, retrieval, drafting — all on-device. The only outbound traffic is to Anthropic under their commercial DPA with no data retention. This removes the ABA Rule 1.6 exposure that prevents most firms from using legal AI on their actual sensitive matters.
If your firm is large enough that Harvey's per-user pricing makes sense AND your matters don't include sealed records / regulated data / clients with AI restrictions, Harvey may be the right answer. Most firms are not in that category.
Pasting privileged client data into a third-party AI tool that retains, trains on, or processes that data on its own infrastructure can violate the duty of confidentiality under ABA Model Rule 1.6 and parallel state rules (including California Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6, Florida Bar Op. 24-1, NY State Bar Op. 1240, and Texas Op. 705).
Knight Legal AI runs on the partner's own machine. Document processing, indexing, retrieval, and drafting happen on-device. Calls to Anthropic occur under their commercial DPA with zero data retention. The architecture itself is what makes the answer defensible — not policy on top of risky architecture.
Every firm should still review the architecture with their own ethics counsel — that review is included in the engagement. The full analysis is in the public Law Firm AI Use Policy.
Knight CTO publishes four fixed prices on the engagements page: a $1,500 Diagnostic (one-time, credited to any retainer signed within 30 days), a $9,800 Knight Legal AI Deployment (one-time install + $600/month support), a $24,000+ Bespoke Build (six-to-twelve-week scoped engagement, fixed price), and a $9,500/month Fractional CTO Retainer.
No hourly billing. No referral fees from any vendor. No surprise invoices. The price is the price.
Industry context: fractional CTO retainers across all industries in 2026 range from $2,999/mo to $25,000+/mo. Legal commands a 30–50% premium over generalist tech consulting. Knight CTO is priced in the middle of the standard range and below the Harvey-style enterprise pricing.
Diagnostic: starts within five business days of signature; written report delivered within five business days of the call. Total elapsed time from "yes" to "you have a written report": about two weeks.
Knight Legal AI Deployment: ships in six weeks total — two weeks of discovery and architecture, four weeks of build with weekly demos, one week for deployment, training, and handover.
Bespoke Builds: six to twelve weeks depending on scope, with weekly demos throughout.
Fractional CTO Retainer: starts the week after signature. Standing weekly call gets scheduled on the first call.
Replies to intake requests go out within one business day. If we both agree it's a fit, we sign within a week.
AI is one of eight domains. The full CTO function covers practice modernization (migration off legacy stacks, practice management, document management, billing, e-signature), vendor diligence (independent evaluation of every tool the firm pays for), security and compliance (ABA 1.6 / 5.3 oversight, encryption, breach response, SOC 2 readiness), cloud and infrastructure (AWS, Azure, on-prem strategy, disaster recovery), custom integrations (Clio to QuickBooks to DocuSign to calendar), engineering hiring (technical interviews, reference calls, comp benchmarking), and a three-year strategic roadmap presented to the partnership.
The full breakdown is on the capabilities page.
No. Knight CTO does not accept referral fees, kickbacks, partner commissions, "implementation partner" rebates, or any other payment from vendors recommended to clients. Independence is the entire value of vendor diligence.
Any conflict of interest (prior employment with a vendor, equity in a competing tool, family relationship to a vendor representative) is disclosed in writing before any recommendation is made. The list of disclosed conflicts is available to clients on request.
Boris Knight does every piece of work personally. No subcontractors, no junior consultants, no white-labeled vendor products. If you engage Knight CTO, you have his mobile number and a working system within 30 days.
Maximum three active engagements at any time. When the slots are full, the website says so.
This is the entire reason the firm exists. The senior-pitches-junior-delivers model is what most consulting feels like; Knight CTO is the opposite of that.
You own everything. Full source code, deployment scripts, runbook, and a one-hour training session for your team. Four weeks of post-launch monitoring is included for builds and deployments. After that, you can manage the system internally or sign a flat monthly support plan.
Retainers are month-to-month after the first quarter. You give 30 days' notice; we close out cleanly. No early-termination penalties. No proprietary file formats that lock you in.
I'd rather lose a renewal than have an unhappy client telling other partners I was the wrong fit.
You do. Custom builds, integrations, custom prompts, audit-log code, and any other deliverable created specifically for your firm is your IP, transferred at delivery. Engagement letter is explicit on this.
Two exceptions: (a) the underlying Knight Legal AI codebase remains my IP — you receive a perpetual license to use the version installed on your machines, but the codebase itself I keep so I can continue to improve it for other firms; (b) generic open-source libraries and dependencies retain their original licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0, etc.).
Every engagement includes documentation, deployment scripts, and runbooks at a level of detail sufficient for a competent successor engineer to take over within two weeks. This is contractual, not aspirational.
Source code escrow is available for clients who require it (typical cost: $50–$150/month, paid by client to the escrow provider). I'll set it up for any client who wants it; most don't, because the runbook + GitHub repo access is sufficient.
If something happens to me mid-engagement, my designated successor is named in the engagement letter. The client has the right to terminate immediately on a force-majeure basis with prorated refund of any unused fees.
Yes, with the caveat that the standard outside-counsel-guidelines language is usually drafted for law firms providing legal services, not technology services. Most clients have a separate "consulting services" template that is the right starting point. I'll redline against the firm's standard form and flag clauses that don't apply to a tech-services engagement.
For NDAs, I default to a mutual NDA. Standard turn-around is 24 hours.
Yes. Most engagements involve coordinating with an existing managed-services provider, in-house IT person, or law-firm-specialized IT vendor. The Fractional CTO function sits above the day-to-day IT operations, not in competition with it.
If your existing IT vendor is the wrong vendor, I'll tell you that — and help you transition. If they're fine, I work with them. The diagnostic engagement includes an honest assessment of the existing IT relationship.
Yes. Most cyber insurance applications now ask about AI use, third-party access to systems, and outsourced IT relationships. The Fractional CTO Retainer counts as outsourced IT for the purposes of those questions. The Knight Legal AI Deployment counts as a covered third-party tool.
I can provide the standard disclosures the carrier will ask for (security posture summary, SOC 2 status, certificate of insurance, named-insured language). Most carriers find the disclosure reduces premium rather than increases it, because the alternative is an undocumented technology posture.
Yes. Professional liability and cyber liability coverage at industry-standard limits for solo technology consultancies. Certificate of insurance available on request before contract signing. The firm can be named as additional insured for any specific engagement on request.
I sign Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) under HIPAA. The standard form is a redline against the firm's standard BAA, typical turnaround 48 hours. If the firm doesn't have a standard BAA, I provide one.
For Knight Legal AI deployments handling PHI: the architecture stays local-first (PHI never leaves the partner's machine), and the BAA covers any incidental processing under the Anthropic model API call (Anthropic also provides a BAA at the enterprise tier).
Yes. The Fractional CTO Retainer includes one M&A technology diligence per year (as buyer or seller). The work covers: tech stack inventory of the target/your firm, contract review for change-of-control clauses, security posture assessment, integration cost estimation, key-person and key-vendor risk identification, and the technology section of the rep-and-warranty insurance application.
Outside the retainer, I do M&A diligence as a fixed-price project engagement: typical $18K–$35K depending on the size of the target and the depth of diligence required. Two-to-four-week turnaround.
Knight CTO is US-based. I work primarily with US firms in US jurisdictions. For firms with international offices, the technology work translates fine (cloud, AI, infrastructure are global), but the regulatory analysis (state bar opinions, federal privacy laws) is US-specific. For UK/EU regulatory work, I partner with local specialists rather than pretend to be one.
Data residency for non-US matters can be designed in (the local-first AI architecture works in any jurisdiction; what changes is which model API endpoint and which regulatory framework we treat as the controlling reference).
Yes — but I publish the working AI Use Policy template publicly on the resources page so any firm can adopt it without an engagement. If your firm wants me to customize it (apply firm-specific tool decisions, sign-off workflow, training plan, integration with existing policies), that's part of the standard engagement at no additional fee.
For other internal documents (incident response plan, breach notification template, vendor evaluation framework, board-level tech briefings), I draft them as part of the retainer or a project engagement. Documents you commission are yours.
I treat law-firm clients the way a law firm treats its own clients on conflicts. Before any new engagement, I run a check against existing clients for direct competitor relationships, opposing-side relationships in pending matters, and any other situation where my work for one firm could disadvantage another. If a conflict exists, I disclose it and let both parties decide whether to consent.
Maximum three active engagements at a time means the conflict surface is small. No engagement-level blast radius across the client base.
The website is intentionally not a corporate brochure. The aesthetic signals "this is an engineer who works with code and data, not a sales operation." Managing partners who respond to that signal are the right clients for this firm. Managing partners who want a polished sales pitch and a 40-slide deck are likely better served by Harvey or a Big Four advisory practice.
The brutalist design is also faster, more accessible, more print-friendly, and more honest. The site loads in 150ms. The downloadable resources are real working documents. The pricing is on the engagements page, in numbers, before you talk to anyone.