THE AI VERDICT · AN INDEPENDENT AI AUDIT · MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA-WIDE Your AI spend has a number. The return should have one too.
In fifteen working days, every AI contract, licence and system your organisation runs is examined and decided: keep, fix or kill. Every line carries its dollar figure and its evidence, cited to page and clause. It closes with a two-page paper written to be read by a board. The fee is fixed and guaranteed twice: refunded in full if delivery misses fifteen working days, and refunded in full if the Ledger identifies less than twice the fee in recoverable cost and priced exposure.
One scoping call. A written scope and a fixed fee follow within two working days.
★ 5.0 · VERIFIED CLIENT REVIEW ON CLUTCH| Line | Annual | Decision | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assistant licences · 240 seats | A$91,200 | FIX | 61 active in 90 days · usage log 14.2 |
| Document pipeline · production | A$118,000 | KEEP | contract 7, cl 4.1 · meets SLA |
| Pilot chatbot · public-facing | A$56,000 | KILL | no owner · exposure priced at note 9 |
The position many organisations are in this year.
None of it is misconduct. It is what happens when adoption outruns measurement, and the published numbers say it is the ordinary case rather than the exception.
-
The unanswered line.
The AI spend has a figure against it. The return does not. When the line comes up, the answer is a description of activity, and everyone at the table can tell the difference. MIT's study of enterprise AI pilots found 95 per cent produced no measurable return.
-
The quiet meter.
Seats bought for everyone, consumption pricing without a ceiling, renewals sitting in inboxes rather than in a calendar. In 2026 research, most IT leaders reported AI charges they had not budgeted, and about half of organisations found a tenth or more of their assistant seats unused.
-
The vendor's homework.
Reports on whether the AI is working tend to come from parties paid more when the answer is yes. The integrator marks the integrator's homework. That is an arrangement, not evidence.
-
The shadow floor.
Staff use tools the organisation never approved, on data the organisation answers for. The usage is real. The visibility is not. In current surveys, nearly half of boards report no agreed position on AI at all.
The pattern has a cost and a date. The cost compounds monthly. The date is usually a renewal notice window, a board meeting, or 10 December 2026, when the Privacy Act's automated decision disclosure requirements take effect.
One engagement. Seven artifacts. One standard.
Every claim in every artifact is traceable to a source document and page.
-
01
The Scope Sheet.
What is in, what is out, the access model, the counting rules for the guarantee, and who commissioned it: management or board. Signed before anything is read.
-
02
The Inventory.
Every AI-related contract, licence, project and disclosed tool in one register, built from the documents themselves rather than from recollection.
-
03
The Evidence Read.
Contracts and usage read through Sourcetrace, our document intelligence instrument. Systems reviewed to the published engineering standard.
-
04
The Ledger of Decisions.
Keep, fix or kill against every material line. Each carries its dollar figure, its evidence, and the action that realises it.
-
05
The Renewal Calendar.
Every notice window dated and cited to its clause, so no option lapses unexamined.
-
06
The Verdict Session.
Ninety minutes. The decisions confirmed live, with the evidence open on the table.
-
07
The Board Paper.
Two pages, written to be read by a board, defensible line by line.
When does the option to renew have to be exercised?
Written notice must be given no earlier than twelve and no later than six months before the term ends. The term ends 30 June 2027, so the window runs 30 June 2026 to 30 December 2026.
123 Collins Street, Lease.pdf
page 14 · clause 12.2(a)
"The Tenant may renew the Lease by giving the Landlord written notice not less than six (6) months and not more than twelve (12) months before the expiry of the Term."
Fifteen working days. About four and a half hours of yours.
-
Days 1 to 2
Scope signed, access granted, read-only. The clock starts at access, not at signature.
-
Days 3 to 9
The read: contracts, invoices, usage records, systems. Questions go to one named contact.
-
Days 10 to 13
The Ledger of Decisions and the Renewal Calendar are drafted.
-
Days 14 to 15
The Verdict Session is held. The Board Paper follows within two working days of the session.
Your team's whole part, published: one 60-minute intake, roughly two hours of IT time granting access, one 90-minute session. Nothing else is asked of your calendar.
The terms, plainly.
The fee is A$24,500 plus GST, fixed. It is invoiced at commissioning and paid before the read begins. The clock starts at access.
Delivered within fifteen working days of access, or the fee is refunded in full. Delivered means the artifacts exist to the published templates and the session has been held or offered. It does not mean the reader agrees with them.
If the Ledger identifies less than A$49,000, twice the fee, in annualised recoverable cost, committed avoidable spend and priced exposure, the fee is refunded in full. A line counts when it carries a dollar figure, its evidence, and the action that realises it.
This floor applies to engagements with at least A$150,000 of annual AI-related spend in scope and at least one system in development, pilot or production. Below that, the delivery guarantee stands and the floor does not.
Dollars realisable now: unused seats, cancellations, renegotiations.
Forward-dated avoidable spend inside twelve months: auto-renewals, uncapped consumption, ramp clauses.
The cost of a pilot shipping as-is or a production system running unexamined, counted conservatively: the lower of remediation cost or evidenced incident cost, from documented comparables.
Refunds under either guarantee are paid within five business days, without negotiation.
The organisation ends the month holding either a defensible position on its AI spend, or its fee back. Those are the two outcomes on offer.
Independence, in writing.
We never take vendor commissions, referral fees or reseller margins. We never promise savings before the evidence is read. And we never sell the fix inside the verdict: every fix line is written as a work order any competent firm can execute, including one that is not us. The finding cannot be inflated to earn us the next job, because the next job is not for sale here.
Built so your people can be straight with us.
The Ledger records decisions and evidence. No artifact names anyone below the signatory, and that sentence appears in the Scope Sheet.
The first five days carry an amnesty: any tool disclosed in that window enters the Inventory marked disclosed under amnesty, without attribution, and receives a transition path rather than a switch-off. Disclosures can come direct to us.
The read is documentary first: billing, contracts, identity logs, repository metadata. Interviews confirm rather than discover, engineer to engineer. A fix line is a costed, board-visible work order, which is how remediation work finally gets its budget.
Traceability is the product standard, not a feature.
- Traceable
Every output cites its source document and page. No orphan facts.
- Private
Your environment or private Australian hosting where selected. No training on your data.
- Reviewed
Named human review points before any output is relied on.
- Audited
A log of what the system read, produced and flagged.
- Honest
Uncertain answers are marked uncertain. Confidence is reported, not performed.
One number, after the work is named.
The AI Verdict is A$24,500 plus GST, fixed, inclusive of every artifact above, invoiced at commissioning and guaranteed twice. For context: a mid-market AI position now commonly runs to six figures a year before project spend is counted, and published audits keep finding five-figure annual waste in unused seats alone. The fee is on this page because you should not have to book a call to learn it. It sits here, after the work it buys, because a number without its contents is only an invitation to compare invoices.
Commissions confirmed within seven days of the written scope receive full work orders for the top three fix items rather than one. One such commission per calendar month.
Capacity, stated plainly.
At most two Verdicts are in delivery at any time, and one new commission is taken per month this season. The principal reads the evidence and signs every verdict personally.
Current position: one slot open for an October start.
The name on the verdict.
Lumen & Lever is led by Lee Powell: Oxford-trained software engineer, roughly thirty years across enterprise architecture and production delivery in banking, insurance, exchange, healthcare and government. He built IBM's first online retail platform and document software used by more than a million writers worldwide. The same discipline that ran a hundred-million-dollar post-acquisition banking integration now examines AI positions and signs verdicts on them.
Founder experience, not a client list: Lloyds International · Commonwealth Bank of Australia · Deutsche Bank · ASX · IBM · Zurich Insurance · GlaxoSmithKline · ASIC · Australian Government Defence · NSW Health · Westpac. These are organisations and sectors from Lee Powell's prior career unless separately named in a Lumen & Lever case record. Confirmed Lumen & Lever outcomes are published separately only when permission exists.
A client, on the record.
"Lumen and Lever ensured that we could make informed decisions about AI. I would highly recommend them"Verified · Clutch 5.0
"They had an exceptional way of communicating extremely technical topics in a simplified and relatable way."
The same instrument, two other uses.
Buying a company rather than examining your own.
Due Diligence is the Verdict pointed at a target. Before you inherit the code, the dependencies or the document-backed revenue, establish what is actually there. Red-flag assessment from A$1,500, full diligence scoped after it.
Holding a verdict and wanting it built.
The chain is fixed: Verdict, then Proof, then Build. Each stage funds only after the previous one is demonstrated on your own material, and proposals are presented in person.
Asked before commissioning.
-
What does an independent AI audit cost in Australia?
The AI Verdict is A$24,500 plus GST, fixed, invoiced at commissioning. There is no retainer and no hourly billing. It is guaranteed twice: refunded in full if delivery misses fifteen working days, and refunded in full if the Ledger identifies less than twice the fee in recoverable cost and priced exposure.
-
Why is the fee paid up front?
Because the verdict must owe nothing to anyone once the read begins. A firm chasing its own invoice at delivery has an interest in the reader's mood. Paid at commissioning and guaranteed twice, the finding answers only to the evidence.
-
We have an IT provider for this.
The provider sells and supports the licences a Verdict examines. Independence is the product here, and it is in writing above.
-
The large firms do AI reviews.
At a different price, on a different clock, and rarely with the partner doing the reading. Here the fee is fixed, the interval is fifteen working days, and the principal signs the verdict.
-
We can measure it ourselves.
Published research reports that most AI projects were approved on projected returns never measured after launch. Internal measurement has already lost to the internal calendar once. Whether it deserves another year is exactly the question.
-
What if the verdict says keep everything?
Then the Board Paper says so with the evidence attached, which is a defensible position the organisation did not have before. The shortfall guarantee covers the case where the Ledger finds less value than the fee.
-
Our data cannot leave the building.
Your environment or private Australian hosting. Read-only access. No training on your data. The access model is signed before anything is read.
-
Will this embarrass whoever bought the AI?
The Ledger names decisions and evidence, not culprits. The remit is the next dollar, not the last one, and that sentence appears in the Scope Sheet.
-
Can a board commission this without management running it?
Yes. A board-commissioned door exists with identical access rules and the same remit sentence. Which door was used is recorded, not hidden.
Tell us what you are about to decide.
A renewal. A stalled project. A board question. An acquisition. One scoping call establishes whether the Verdict fits, and if it does not, we will say so and point you somewhere better suited.
hello@lumenandlever.com · Melbourne · in person or remote, with travel at cost outside Melbourne.