A conversation with Illitch, CEO and Co-Founder of Rubiklab
The journey to building CoreClarity didn’t start with AI. It started with frustration.
After spending over 20 years in international market research and data collection, our CEO Illitch saw the same problem repeating across complex B2B projects: teams were spending 80% of their time wrestling with data preparation and only 20% extracting real insights. “There had to be a better way,” he recalls.
The Problem: Drowning in Unstructured Data
Professional services firms face a unique challenge. They generate enormous volumes of valuable conversations, like client interviews, stakeholder feedback, workshop recordings, research reports that live scattered across folders and drives. Bringing it all together to create a holistic view feels nearly impossible.
“I understood that the type of issues professional services and law firms in particular had to deal with was very similar to what we were facing daily,” Illitch explains. “A huge volume of conversations, unstructured data living in different places, and a real struggle to synthesize it all.”
The turning point came during a conversation about a telecom risk analysis project involving 60 reports of 70 pages each, 4,200 pages to review before even beginning analysis. “I thought that there’s got to be a better way of doing this. And the rest is history.”
Why Generic AI Tools Fall Short
When ChatGPT emerged, everyone suddenly had access to AI. So why build something different?
The answer lies in understanding both data and the inherent limitations of large language models. “Because of our background, we understand data,” says Illitch. “This gave us a healthy dose of skepticism about what was possible with AI tools right from the start.”
Generic AI tools have what Illitch calls “bad behaviors” baked into their models:
- They want to please: If they can’t find a suitable answer, they’ll exaggerate facts or draw spurious connections
- They can be lazy: They’ll give you the first semantically similar answer rather than the most accurate one
- They’re like overconfident teenagers: Too smart for their own good, thinking they have answers for everything when they often lack the necessary knowledge
The CoreClarity Difference: Pre-Processing and Constitutional Controls
CoreClarity addresses these limitations through two fundamental innovations:
1. Rigorous Pre-Processing
Before any AI analysis happens, data goes through 20+ preparation steps using specialized statistical tools. For example, sentiment analysis uses dedicated algorithms rather than asking AI to “wing it,” delivering far greater accuracy.
“The key is pre-processing,” Illitch emphasizes. “It’s not glamorous, but it’s what makes the difference between directionally correct and exactly correct—and that’s a huge difference.”
2. Constitutional AI Governance
Inspired by Anthropic’s Claude model, CoreClarity implements a “constitution” that defines expected behaviors and prevents the tool from being lazy, cheeky, or comfortable with improvisation. Every answer is properly referenced and cited, similar to academic work, eliminating the black box problem of generic AI.
“We force the tool to give you the right answer,” says Illitch. “And we quote and reference everything, so you always see the building blocks used in the reasoning.”
Real Impact: From 80/20 to 95/5
The results speak for themselves. When Mills & Reeve, a leading UK law firm, used CoreClarity to analyze over 60 in-depth client interviews, they reduced analysis time from 3-4 weeks to just a few days.
But the transformation goes deeper than speed. “We’ve completely switched the ratio,” Illitch notes. “It’s almost 95/5 now—95% of time extracting value, only 5% wrestling with data. This completely changes the mental bandwidth available for teams to really squeeze every bit of insight from their data.”
The tool also enables a shift from scheduled learning to continuous insight. Instead of accumulating material for months then blocking weeks for analysis, firms can build living knowledge bases that grow and evolve with each new conversation or data point.
Use Cases We Never Imagined
One of the most exciting aspects of the journey has been watching how creative users become with the platform.
Publishing: A legal publisher uploaded an author’s book to CoreClarity. The feedback was striking: “It felt like I was talking to someone who had read the book, understood it deeply, and remembered it really well—not just a parrot that regurgitates content.” The tool now helps readers quickly identify which titles in a 150-book catalog they should read first based on their specific needs.
Knowledge Management: Organizations are creating comprehensive knowledge vaults containing training materials, research reports, and institutional expertise. This transforms onboarding and professional development, allowing trainers to focus on application rather than information transfer.
Thought Leadership: Firms are using CoreClarity for white space mapping to understand what they’ve already published, identifying gaps, and ensuring their content strategy is coherent and differentiated. One analysis found that professional services firms have up to 5,000+ pieces of thought leadership on their websites. “Do you even know what you’re publishing? What’s the voice of your firm on ESG in Japan?” Illitch asks.
Interactive Content: HLB, a global network of accounting firms, now offers a web chat tool powered by CoreClarity that makes years of high-quality research instantly accessible to website visitors. Instead of a useless chatbot, it’s “an Oracle with highly curated data in the background.”
Security by Design
Working with highly confidential client information demands the highest security standards. CoreClarity’s advantage? Being built for this purpose from day one.
“We didn’t have to retrofit AI onto existing infrastructure,” Illitch explains. “When security is woven into the technology from the ground up, you have a much more solid approach by definition.”
Key security features include:
- Complete data segregation between clients
- Granular access controls within organizations
- Client data never used to train models
- Encryption and hosting meeting the most stringent global standards
- Regular ethical hacking and penetration testing
- Comprehensive security white papers for compliance processes
The proof? CoreClarity works with top 10 global law firms and accountancy practices, all of which have completed rigorous security reviews.
What’s Next: Sector Knowledge Bases
The roadmap ahead is ambitious. CoreClarity is building sector-specific knowledge bases that combine external intelligence, like industry trends, company data, news feeds, competitor intelligence, with firms’ proprietary expertise.
“The magic happens when you combine external knowledge with your own legacy knowledge,” says Illitch. “It’s about balancing the spirit of the time, knowing what’s happening right now, with the spirit of the depth. and your unique institutional expertise. When you combine the two, you create something nobody can replicate.”
These dynamic knowledge bases will help firms identify business development opportunities in real-time, matching external signals with internal capabilities. Imagine the system spotting an emerging opportunity and suggesting: “Angela from the Hong Kong office would be absolutely perfect for this because of X, Y, and Z. Here are the next three steps you should take.”
A Partnership Approach
The collaboration between Rubiklab and Meridian West has been fundamental to CoreClarity’s evolution. “We approach it from a very humble perspective,” Illitch reflects. “We bring the technology; they bring the experience of working with firms. Bringing the two together has been quite exciting.”
The feedback loop from clients continuously shapes the platform. “Every month there are new features,” notes Illitch. “And the key point is that clients never go back. Once they experience this way of working, there’s absolutely no way they return to the old approach.”
The Bottom Line
CoreClarity was built to solve a real problem: helping knowledge-intensive organizations actually leverage the knowledge they possess. By combining rigorous data science with constitutional AI governance, it delivers what generic AI tools cannot: Accuracy you can trust for high-stakes professional services work.
As Illitch puts it: “If your organization knew what it already knows, you’d be three times more efficient. We’re making that possible.”
Interested in seeing how CoreClarity could transform your firm’s approach to client intelligence, knowledge management, or thought leadership?
