Guide · Consultancies, accounting practices and law firms

Giving an AI assistant its own email address: a setup checklist for small firms

What it can see, what it can send, and how to switch it off. · 7 October 2026

Most of the work in a small professional firm arrives by email: a client's question, a document request, a proposal to revise, a thread that needs a follow-up. An AI assistant that can work on those threads is useful. The question is how it gets access.

There are broadly three ways to do it. This guide explains why we think the third is the right default, then walks through the decisions to make before you start.

Three ways to connect an assistant to email

1. Full access to your mailbox. The tool connects to your account and can read everything, and often send as you. It's convenient, but the assistant sees every client, every personal message and every thread, whether or not it's relevant.
2. Copy and paste. You paste an email into a chat window and copy the answer back. It's contained, but slow, and attachments and thread history get lost along the way.
3. Its own address. The assistant has an address of its own, like a new colleague. You copy it in (CC) or forward the threads you want help with. It sees only what you share, and everyone on the thread can see it's involved.

The third option matches how you'd bring in a junior colleague: they get their own inbox, you loop them in on specific work, and they don't send anything important without you checking it.

The setup checklist

1. Decide what it may see

• Which clients or kinds of work is it for? Start narrow, with one practice area or one kind of request.
• Which kinds of information should never go to it? Common examples are health information, passwords and bank details, and anything a client has asked you to keep off third-party systems.
• Does the tool keep one client's work separate from another's?

2. Decide what it may send

The safe default is that it may send nothing on its own. It drafts, and a named person approves each message before it goes. The approval should cover:

• the exact text, as it will be sent;
• every recipient, including CC and BCC;
• every attachment, and which version of it.

If anything changes after approval, the message needs approving again. It's tempting to relax this for "simple" replies. Wait until you've seen weeks of drafts that needed no changes, and even then, keep approval for anything going outside the firm.

3. Be open with clients

• Give the assistant a name and signature that say plainly it's an AI assistant working with your team. Don't let it pass as a person.
• Consider a sentence in your engagement letter or terms explaining that you use AI tools to help prepare work, and that a person reviews anything sent to clients.
• If your profession has rules or guidance on AI and client confidentiality, check them. Lawyers, accountants and auditors may need client consent before client information goes into some tools.

4. Check how the tool treats your data

• Is your data used to train AI models? Can you switch that off, in writing?
• Where is it stored and processed, and which other companies are involved?
• How long is mail kept, and can you delete it, including attachments?
• What happens to the address and its mail if you stop using the tool?

5. Keep a record

You should be able to answer, for any message: what the assistant read, what it drafted, who approved it, and what was actually sent. This is how you supervise the work and how you answer a client's question later.

6. Know how to switch it off

• Stopping should be as simple as no longer copying the address in.
• Know who in the firm can pause or remove the assistant, and what happens to drafts that haven't been sent.
• Make sure mail sent to the address after you stop doesn't silently disappear: someone should still see it.

Good first jobs for an assistant with its own address

• Accounting practices: chasing missing documents for a return, summarising what a client has sent so far, drafting a reply to a routine query for the accountant to check.
• Consultancies: summarising a long client thread before a meeting, drafting a follow-up with agreed actions, turning notes into a first-pass proposal for you to edit.
• Law firms: sorting incoming mail by urgency, listing dates and deadlines for you to check, drafting acknowledgements and document requests. See our guide to triaging client email safely.

Mistakes to avoid

• Letting it send "just the routine ones" before you've reviewed it for a while.
• Giving it a whole mailbox when it only needs a few threads.
• Letting the assistant appear to be a person.
• Treating its list of deadlines as your diary, rather than as a prompt to check your diary.
• Forgetting attachments: they often hold the most sensitive information in a thread.

This guide is general information, not legal, accounting or regulatory advice.