When a firm decides to “get Copilot”, the default is to license everyone. It feels fair, it’s one decision instead of thirty, and the reseller is happy to quote it.
In most firms I’d start with about four. Not because Copilot isn’t good. Because a licence nobody uses is just a monthly charge, and you can’t tell in advance who’ll use it.
First, check what you already have
Before buying anything, know that Copilot Chat is included with eligible Microsoft 365 licences: an AI chat grounded on the web, signed in with your work account, with no extra seat to buy (Microsoft Learn). For a lot of people, that covers what they’d actually use: drafting an email, rewording a paragraph, explaining a formula.
The paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence adds the part that works inside your firm’s information: your mail, files, meetings and chats. That’s where the real time savings are, and also where the oversharing risk is (more on that in what Copilot can see in your SharePoint).
So the real question isn’t “who should have AI?” It’s “whose work depends on finding and writing things across our own files and mail?”
Who usually gets the first seats
These are patterns, not rules, but the people who get the most out of a paid seat tend to:
- write a lot: proposals, reports, long client emails, minutes;
- read a lot: long threads, contracts, documents someone else wrote;
- search a lot: “where’s the latest version of…”, “what did we agree with…”;
- sit in a lot of Teams meetings and need the summary afterwards.
The people who get the least are usually those whose day happens in another system: a practice-management tool, a design package, the warehouse. They may still love Copilot Chat. They rarely need the paid seat.
In a 20- to 40-person firm, that first group is often four to eight people [Estimate]. Partners and senior staff who write and review are usually in it. So, more often than you’d expect, is whoever keeps the office running.
Run a 60-day pilot, and measure it
Buy the first seats, then give them a fair chance:
- Before anyone starts, get the permissions in order. A pilot is a bad time to discover the salary file.
- Train on the firm’s real work. An hour on “how do I draft our engagement letter with Copilot” beats a generic demo.
- Check the usage report at day 30 and day 60. The Microsoft 365 admin centre has a Copilot usage report that shows how many licensed people actually used it, and in which apps (Microsoft Learn). There’s a readiness report too, which shows who’s technically ready for a licence (Microsoft Learn).
- Ask the people, too. Usage numbers tell you who opened it. A two-minute conversation tells you whether it saved them time.
The day-60 decision
At day 60, write down one decision per seat: keep it, move it to someone else, or drop it. Licences can be unassigned and reassigned in the admin centre (Microsoft Learn), so a seat that didn’t work for one person can go to the person down the hall who keeps asking about it.
Check your licence terms before you buy, too. Some subscriptions are annual commitments, and that changes how quickly you can drop a seat. The licensing page lists which plans Copilot can be added to (Microsoft Learn).
Then grow from evidence. If all four seats are busy and two more people want one, that’s a good problem to have.
A word about who’s advising you
Whoever sells you the licences earns a margin on them. That includes me: Accipa resells Microsoft licences, and I’ll always tell you so up front. What keeps the advice honest is putting it in writing: the seat count you started with, the usage at day 60, and the decision. If you’d rather buy directly from Microsoft, the price is the same and the advice doesn’t change.
If you’d rather I ran it
The questions to ask before the first seat are on the free AI Guardrails checklist, under “before you switch Copilot on”. If you’d rather I ran the pilot, the Copilot Rollout is one of the three builds: seats for the pilot group, two training sessions on your real work, a 30- and 60-day usage review, and a written right-sizing decision at day 60.
Sources: Microsoft Learn, as linked above, checked 8 November 2026. Licence names and what's included change often; check the licensing page on the day you buy.