Who you would be working with
Anthony Gratson — Founder & fractional automation partner. Built in West Michigan. Working with firms anywhere.
15+ years, mostly spent turning messy business problems into software people actually use. I started as a front-end engineer and kept moving toward the part I like best: sitting with the people doing the work and figuring out what would genuinely help them.
Nine of those years were at Crowe LLP, a top-15 US accounting firm with more than $1B in revenue. I started there as a front-end engineer and ended up leading product design for the firm, building the team and the design system behind more than a hundred of its products. But here's the part that matters to you: I spent nine years inside a professional services firm. Billable hours, client intake, busy season, partners who need an answer without interrupting six people to get it. I'm not learning how your business works from a blog post.
After that I led UX at The C2 Group, a 40-person digital agency, on work like the State of Nevada's statewide web ecosystem and Modern Woodmen's member platform — big, messy projects with a lot of stakeholders and no room to be precious about it.
These days I also lead product and growth at Celestial Divide, a patent-pending SaaS platform for estate and family law professionals. That operation runs on the same kind of automation I'd build for you: Claude agents handling research, list auditing, content scheduling, and analytics — work that would otherwise need a team. So when I tell you what AI can and can't do for your firm, that's coming from using it in a business every day, not from reading about it.
Here's what that adds up to. I've been the engineer, the design leader inside a firm, the agency guy juggling a dozen stakeholders, and now someone running his own practice with his own margins to watch. I've seen what actually works and what's just expensive. That judgment is the real thing I'm offering you — not the automation itself, but knowing which one is worth building.
Background
How I work
Every engagement starts with whoever does the annoying task. They know what's broken — usually nobody has asked them in a way that led to anything changing.
A working thing in week one beats a roadmap in month three, and it tells us both whether the idea survives contact with how your firm really operates.
The goal is a system nobody thinks about, that keeps running when I'm not here, and that your team can explain to the next person they hire.
Some ideas cost more to automate than to keep doing by hand. Telling you that is part of what you're paying for.
On the word
An agency sells you people by the hour and hopes you need a lot of them. A practice is what your accountant runs, and what your attorney runs: one person accountable, a standing relationship, and judgment you can call on before the problem is fully formed. That's the relationship I'm trying to have with your firm.
Send me the thing that's bugging you. If nothing comes of it, you still get an honest read on whether it's worth automating.
Get in touch