Use case · Legal Services
Automation for firms where every hour should be billable.
Lawyers bill by the hour and lose hours every week to intake, conflict checks, time entry, and client follow-ups. We build automation that respects privilege and audit requirements while moving the administrative layer off your attorneys' calendars.
Tell-tale signs
Most firms hit these walls between 10 and 50 attorneys.
Law firms run on tradition and on paper — both of which compound as the firm grows:
Matter intake takes a week from first call to engagement letter
Conflict check → engagement letter draft → fee agreement → matter setup → client portal access — all done by hand by a paralegal who has 30 other things on their plate.
Time entry is the partner's least favorite hour of the week
Friday afternoon: every attorney reconstructs their week from email, calendar, and memory. By Monday, 15–25% of billable time has evaporated.
Client comms are inconsistent
Status updates depend on the attorney. Some clients get weekly check-ins, some get silence for months. Both lead to bad reviews and bad renewals.
Documents live in 6 places
Some in NetDocuments, some in iManage, some on a shared drive, some in someone's email. Finding the right version of a contract is a 30-minute archaeological dig.
Highest-ROI automations
What we ship most often for law firms + legal teams.
Built with privilege, conflict, and retention in mind — full audit logs, access controls, and document retention policies baked in.
Matter intake + conflict check orchestration
Intake form → automated conflict check against your database → engagement letter generation → fee agreement → matter setup → client portal credentials. From 5 days to 90 minutes.
See related automationsTime-entry capture + reconciliation
Calendar + email + document activity automatically captured as time entry suggestions for attorney review. Cuts 'reconstruction Friday' from 2 hours to 20 minutes per attorney.
See related automationsAutomated billing workflows
Pre-bill generation, attorney review, client billing format compliance (ABA codes, LEDES for corporate clients), AR aging alerts, payment reconciliation. Reclaims a billing-specialist FTE.
See related automationsClient status update automation
Templated client recaps with matter-specific milestones, attorney-reviewed before send. Ensures every client gets consistent comms whether their attorney remembers or not.
See related automationsDocument automation + templates
Standard agreements (NDAs, engagement letters, settlements) generated from structured intake data + reviewed by attorney before send. Cuts drafting time substantially on routine matters.
See related automationsE-discovery + matter management workflows
Custodian holds, evidence collection, review platform integration, production pipelines. Litigation ops is its own beast — we scope it as a phase 2 once foundational automation is live.
See related automationsTypical stack
The tools we usually see in this industry.
We integrate around what you run today — no platform swaps required. Don't see your tool? Ask.
- Clio
- MyCase
- PracticePanther
- Smokeball
- NetDocuments
- iManage
- DocuSign
- Adobe Sign
- PandaDoc
- QuickBooks
- Bill.com
- Microsoft 365
- Outlook
- Slack
- Zoom
- LawPay
Composite example
25-attorney mid-size firm — matter intake from 5 days to 90 minutes.
The setup
Regional law firm. 25 attorneys, 12 paralegals. Practice areas: commercial litigation, employment, M&A. Matter intake was a 5-day process from prospect call through engagement letter signature. Conflict checks ran across 3 separate databases, manually. Time-entry compliance hovered at 78%.
What we did
- 1Mapped the intake-to-engagement workflow including conflict check requirements
- 2Built an intake form with automated routing + conflict screening against the firm's databases
- 3Templated engagement letter + fee agreement generation tied to intake data
- 4Integrated DocuSign + Clio for matter creation + client portal provisioning
- 5Added Slack alerts for intake bottlenecks and missing time entries
Composite of patterns we've seen in legal engagements; not a single named client.
Outcome
- Time-to-engagement
- 5 days → 90 min
- Conflict check accuracy
- 100%
- Time-entry compliance
- 78% → 96%
- Billable hours recovered
- 8 hrs / atty / mo
Pricing snapshot
$12,000 – $50,000
Payback: 60–120 days typical
Most firms start with intake + conflict check + time-entry capture as one project ($15k–$25k). Document automation and e-discovery workflows usually come in phase 2.
- Free 30-min scoping call
- Industry-specific scope
- Source code + workflows you own
- 30 days post-launch tuning
- Compliance-aware where relevant
Questions
Common questions for legal services & law firms.
- How does this work with privilege and confidentiality?
- Every workflow we build for legal teams runs inside your existing systems — Clio, NetDocuments, iManage, etc. We don't proxy or store privileged content. Audit logs capture every PHI/PII/privileged touch for compliance review.
- Will this conflict with our malpractice insurance requirements?
- We've worked alongside the standard requirements. The key issues — written authority for client comms, attorney review of all outbound communications, audit trails — are baked into our designs. Your insurance carrier may want to review specific workflows; happy to share what we typically build.
- Can you integrate with our practice management system (Clio, MyCase, etc.)?
- Yes. Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, and Smokeball all have APIs we work with regularly. We extend your PMS rather than replace it — most of the value is at the seams between PMS, DMS, billing, and client portals.
- Do you do litigation tech / e-discovery?
- Some. E-discovery is its own deep specialty (Relativity, Everlaw, etc.) and we scope it separately. For matter-level automation around custodian holds, document collection, and production workflows, yes — these are familiar patterns to us.
Other industries we serve
Different industry? Same patterns.
Go deeper
Legal Services & Law Firms automation, in depth.
The ROI of Automation for Law Firms: Recapturing Billable Hours
How to calculate the ROI of automation for a law firm — the billable-hour math, where firms lose time to intake and admin, and a worked example with realistic payback.
Read the playbookDocuSign + Salesforce Automation: From Sent to Signed to Booked in One Workflow
Get a contract from sent to signed to booked-in-Salesforce without a human touching the workflow. Here's the architecture, the AppExchange setup, and the custom hooks that make it work for real B2B teams.
Read the playbookHow to Calculate the True Cost of Manual Data Entry
Most companies underestimate manual data entry cost by 3–5×. Here's the formula we use to calculate the real number — and the four hidden costs almost everyone misses.
Read the playbookReady to scope a build for legal services & law firms?
Book a free 30-minute discovery call. We'll talk through your stack, your goals, and walk away with a written plan and a quote.