Winning More Time for Strategy: How Stinson is Transforming RFP and Proposal Responses with ikaun
Background: Build a Process That Enables High Value Client Pursuits
Stinson LLP, an Am Law 200 firm with 500 attorneys across 16 offices, manages a substantial volume of formal RFPs and proposals every year. As client demands for speed, precision, and personalization continued to rise, the firm recognized that its legacy tools—a combination of shared drives and a homegrown experience database—were reaching their limits in terms of scalability and use. Information lived in silos, proposal content aged quickly, and manual effort consumed valuable time that could be spent on strategy.
The business development team needed a modern platform that would centralize content, streamline the connection between the experience system and the firm’s financial system, and introduce automation to reduce manual effort while improving quality and decision-making.
To address these challenges, Stinson implemented ikaun as its firmwide platform for proposal generation and experience management. The technology was chosen for its ability to connect directly with the firm’s financial system and to centralize knowledge across business development and marketing.
Within this initiative, Carling Futvoye, Senior Proposal & Experience Manager, plays a key role overseeing proposal development, experience data management, and content governance. Her goal was clear: to build a process that would reduce administrative friction, deliver usable data, and free the team to focus on strategic client pursuits.
“The ability to streamline RFP responses, enhance experience descriptions, and uncover key insights makes a real difference – not just in how we work, but in how we deliver value to our clients.”
Carling Futvoye, Senior Proposal and Experience Manager.
Challenges: Disconnected Systems Impede Strategy
Before ikaun, assembling a proposal required hours of manual effort. The homegrown database had limited data coming in from the firm’s financial system, not linked to other applications, which meant experience information needed to be updated and maintained manually. Searching for relevant content involved combing through prior responses across shared drives without an easy way to tell which version was current. Even small changes could cause delays, as the team had to verify data accuracy and formatting for each new submission.
The lack of real-time visibility into firm experience made it difficult to quickly assess whether Stinson had handled similar matters or to evaluate new opportunities efficiently. Each proposal required an extraordinary amount of administrative attention, limiting the team’s ability to step back and focus on the quality of the response and overall strategy.
The process was a functional but inefficient, manual effort that left little time for creativity or strategic thinking. The team wanted to focus on crafting compelling, client-centered narratives rather than chasing information across disconnected systems.
Results: ikaun Enables Winning Strategies for Clients
Since going live, ikaun has streamlined how Stinson manages proposals. The difference is visible in speed, consistency, and overall quality.
Tasks that once required significant manual review now take much less effort. Using ikaun’s conversational search, Carling’s team can more easily locate and reuse content from prior proposals, dramatically reducing turnaround time. That speed has freed her team to concentrate on strategy and message alignment.
ikaun’s integration with the firm’s financial system has created a useful link between financial data and experience, ensuring that every piece of proposal content reflects accurate, current information. Centralized storage has reduced errors and inconsistencies across marketing materials.
The platform has also improved decision-making. With more visibility into firm experience data, the team can determine whether Stinson has handled similar work, enabling faster and better-informed go/no-go decisions.
As the firm continues to evolve its use of ikaun, Stinson is preparing to adopt new agentic AI capabilities that will automate even more of the RFP process—from compliance validation to intelligent scoring—further extending the results already achieved.
ikaun has enabled Stinson to modernize proposal management, unlock firm knowledge, and shift focus from administrative work to strategy and storytelling. By centralizing experience data and introducing automation, the firm has created a faster, more informed, and more creative approach to business development
“ikaun has made responding to RFPs much easier. Experience is easy to find, and it’s tied directly to the attorneys who worked on the matter. We finally have a system that saves time, improves consistency, and gives us the space to focus on what really matters—developing compelling proposals that tell our firm’s story."
Carling Futvoye, Senior Proposal and Experience Manager.
Challenges:
Disconnected systems and manual effort: The team spent significant time searching prior responses, without a clear view of how current the content or experience was.
Reduced visibility into firm experience: Limited real-time data made identifying past work or confirming whether Stinson had handled similar matters difficult.
Too much time on administration, not strategy: The process functioned, but inefficiently. Manual work dominated each proposal cycle, leaving less capacity for strategic positioning.
Solutions Powered by ikaun:
Faster turnaround: Proposal creation is faster and more consistent with centralized access to experience and content.
Improved accuracy: Integration with the firm’s financial system provides a clearer view of firm experience, supporting more reliable content.
Smarter pursuit decisions: Teams can now make faster, more data-driven go/no-go decisions.
About ikaun
ikaun is the AI-powered platform built to help law firms win more work. By combining intelligent content automation, configurable AI agents, and centralized experience management, ikaun empowers legal marketing and business development teams to produce high-quality proposals faster, more accurately, and with less effort. Learn more at www.ikaun.com.