Six interviews, one consultant, a pile of notebooks
A client has asked your consultancy to run an independent investigation into a complaint about a team leader. Your consultant interviews the complainant, the team leader and four witnesses over two days at the client's site. A note taker from the client comes to some of the meetings. Others are done over Teams with the consultant typing and listening at the same time.
Then the real work starts. Handwritten notes are typed up. Each witness is sent their notes to check. Two reply with changes, one never replies, one wants to add something they forgot. The consultant then reads everything again to write the report, copying quotes out of six documents and trying to keep track of which version each witness agreed.
Where the time actually goes
The interviews themselves are the smallest part. The time is spent converting what was said into agreed text, and then finding the relevant parts of that text again when writing findings. Both are clerical tasks sitting on the desk of your most expensive person.
- Typing up handwritten notes, sometimes someone else's handwriting.
- Chasing witnesses to review and sign their notes.
- Keeping track of which version of each statement is the agreed one.
- Searching across statements for every mention of one incident.
- Building the appendix of documents referred to in the report.
What slow write-ups cost
Investigations that drag on are hard on everyone involved, and clients notice. Memories fade between interview and signed statement, which makes the statement less useful. Consultant time on typing is time that cannot be sold elsewhere, and fixed-fee investigations become unprofitable without anyone quite seeing why. When the report is challenged later, a messy version history makes it harder to show what each witness actually agreed.
| Stage | Manual route | What we automate |
|---|---|---|
| Interview record | Notes typed from memory and handwriting | Transcript where agreed, draft notes from it |
| Witness review | Emailed Word files and chasing | Review link, tracked changes, e-signature |
| Version control | Filenames and memory | Agreed version locked and dated |
| Writing findings | Re-reading every statement | Statements searchable by allegation and person |
| Appendices | Built by hand | Bundled and indexed automatically |
How we build the investigation workflow
- Each investigation has a record with the allegations listed as separate points, the people involved and the planned interviews.
- Where participants consent to recording, interviews held in person or on Teams are transcribed. A model such as Anthropic Claude or OpenAI's drafts interview notes in your house format from the transcript, preserving what was said rather than summarising it away.
- Where recording is not used, the consultant's rough notes or photographed handwriting are turned into a typed draft to correct.
- The investigator edits and approves each draft before anything goes to the witness.
- Witnesses receive a secure link to review their notes, suggest changes and sign. Every version is kept, and the signed one is locked.
- Statements are tagged against the allegations they relate to, so the investigator can see everything said about one allegation side by side.
- Documents referred to in interviews are collected into an indexed appendix, ready to attach to the report.
Findings and conclusions are the investigator's alone. The model helps with typing and organising. It does not weigh evidence or suggest outcomes, and we design the prompts so it cannot be used that way by accident.
What investigators get back
Write-ups become a correction job rather than a typing job. The status of every witness statement is visible, so chasing is targeted. When the investigator sits down to write findings, the evidence is already arranged by allegation. And if the process is later questioned, there is a clean record of each statement's versions and when each was agreed.
For the consultancy, investigations become easier to scope and price, because the unpredictable admin has shrunk.
Is this your investigation process?
- Typing up interview notes takes longer than the interviews.
- Witness review happens by emailing Word documents back and forth.
- You have been unsure which version of a statement was agreed.
- Report writing starts with re-reading every document.
- Fixed-fee investigations regularly overrun.