The case management system your firm runs its matters on

Everyone in the building opens the same screen, and in most firms it is called the Matter.

A typical business running one of these has 40 to 120 staff across two or three offices, about half of them fee earners, with a few thousand live matters, several hundred opened and closed each month, and a few hundred letters, emails and reports arriving on them every day. Most firms that size run a bought case management package; this page is about the firm whose system is its own, written in-house or customised past the supplier's upgrades. Whichever generation built it, in 2007 or 2020, the job is the same.

In the fee earner's words, it opens the matter and runs the conflict check, holds the key dates (limitation, exchange and completion, hearings), works through the task list for the matter type, merges precedents into Word, files the documents, records time, drafts the bill and sends it to accounts. A personal injury department also exchanges low-value claims with the claims portal through it, and the compliance partner runs a report from it before every Lexcel visit.

The rules it keeps are why the firm has never replaced it:

• A limitation date on a personal injury matter reminds the fee earner at six months, three months and one month, and the supervising partner at one month, and the reminder cannot be dismissed, only actioned.
• A purchase matter will not move to exchange until the searches are recorded, the mortgage offer is on file and the client's ID check carries a date.
• A legal aid bill has its own rate table, its own template and time codes a private client bill never shows.
• One commercial client's matters carry its own reference beside the firm's, and its bills go to a named person on a fixed day each month.
• A file cannot be archived until the client account balance is nil and the destruction date, which depends on the matter type, is set.

Ask for a written version of any of that and someone will point at the screen.

Built between 2004 and 2012, in one of two ways. Some firms had their IT manager, or a contractor from a legal software house, write it for the busiest department, usually conveyancing or personal injury, and it spread one matter type at a time: a Windows client on the .NET Framework, grown out of a Microsoft Access database one department still uses as its front end. Others bought a package, then scripted its workflows and added screens in-house until the supplier's next version would have overwritten the lot, so the upgrade never came. Either way the data is in SQL Server, the documents in a SharePoint library or on file shares, and the bills come out of Crystal Reports. It runs on a server in the main office, installed on every desk, with the other offices reaching it over the link between sites.

The person who wrote it, or scripted the package, left years ago, and no one has edited a line since. That keeps the reminders firing on time and keeps a new matter type waiting. Court is out of reach without a remote session, and the SharePoint farm lost its support in July 2026.

The same matter system built between 2016 and 2022, by a small agency or a freelancer as a browser system in React, Angular or Node or .NET Core, or assembled in Power Apps by an IT manager whose licences already covered it. From the fee earner's side it looks modern: the matter opens in a browser, the key dates reach a laptop at court, and clients upload their ID through a portal.

The key dates are what strand it. The reminder rules run as a scheduled job on the agency's server, where the firm cannot see them, and when a field was added to the exchange checklist the one-month warning to the supervising partner quietly stopped. It was weeks before anyone missed it, and the firm has not risked another change. The lender panel questionnaire now asks who holds administrator access to client data, and the answer is an agency that has stopped returning calls. Since 2023 a few firms have started one in an AI app builder, and it stalled short of the conflict check, the part that has to be right. Younger by a decade, it is stuck all the same.

Every matter in one place, every key date surfaced, and a bill built from the time already recorded.

The matter screen is what lets a firm of this size run thousands of files without any one of them depending on one person's memory. When a fee earner is off sick and the client rings for news, the answer is on the screen, with the last note and the next task.

The key dates are the part the firm depends on most, and the part the professional indemnity insurer asks about at renewal. A limitation date that surfaces on its own, to the right people, at the right intervals, is the difference between a diary and a negligence claim.

Then the bill. Because time is recorded against the matter as it happens and the bill is drafted from it, WIP turns into an invoice without anyone reading a paper timesheet. The compliance answers come out of the same place at audit time: file reviews sampled, conflicts run, key dates cleared.

It has lasted because it was shaped around the firm, one department at a time, and no package straight out of the box has matched it since.

Systems like this seldom break. They fall behind the way the firm now works.

The documents sit on a farm out of support. The library is SharePoint 2016 or 2019, both out of support since 14 July 2026, beside a SQL Server 2016 database whose updates ended the same month. The firm's IT support can keep both servers running but has no fixes left to apply, and the Cyber Essentials application stalls on both.

The fee earners left the building. A desktop system on the office network cannot be opened from court, from home or from a client's boardroom without a remote session that drops. So the key dates get copied into Outlook, the task list into a notebook, and the system catches up when someone is back at their desk.

The chap who wrote it has retired. Since then a precedent is changed by editing the merged Word file by hand, and a new matter type or a new step in a scripted workflow, which used to take him an afternoon, waits until somebody finds a developer willing to open the code.

The bill reaches accounts on paper. Whether the draft prints from Crystal or downloads from the agency's screen, it is re-keyed into the accounts system, and the two disagree at month end often enough that the cashier keeps a reconciliation spreadsheet beside them both.

The same matter, in a browser, with the documents, the clients and the accounts connected to it.

The matter from anywhere. Key dates, tasks and the last note in a browser at court, at home or across the client's table, on the same database. The Outlook copy and the notebook stop.

Documents on a supported store. The library moves off the farm one department at a time, with the link from every matter kept working. The Cyber Essentials form gets a straight answer.

Precedents the firm can edit. The letters come out of the code into templates a senior secretary maintains, with the merge fields listed beside each one. A new matter type stops waiting for a developer.

Bills posted, not printed. Time and disbursements go to the accounts system as a posting, and month end reconciles itself. The cashier's spreadsheet goes.

A view for the client. The client sees the stage their matter has reached and uploads a document without phoning, which takes the "where are we" calls off the secretaries.

The rules where the compliance partner can see them. The limitation reminders, the exchange gate and the archive rule come out of the code into settings, written down with the people who rely on them.

Neither the desktop system nor the browser version is switched off for any of this. Each piece is added beside what the firm already runs.

In the reading between a letter arriving and the file moving on, and in the questions no report was written to answer.

AI belongs in the post and the records, never in the advice.

Incoming post read onto the matter. A letter from the other side, a medical report or a court order arrives, and a secretary reads it, files it, types the attendance note and sets the next task. AI reads it, matches it to the matter and drafts the note and the task, pointing out any date it mentions for the fee earner to confirm. At a few hundred items a day, a couple of minutes saved on each typically gives each department's secretaries an hour or two back.

Questions asked of the matters in plain words. "Which of our matters have had no activity for a month?" "Which key dates fall next week with no task behind them?" AI answers from the matter records and lists every matter it counted, so the supervising partner opens the files rather than trusting a number. Across a few thousand live matters, that typically replaces an hour or so a week of setting the aged matters report against the key dates list.

The file review sample read before a visit. Before a Lexcel visit the compliance partner reads a sample of files against the checklist. AI reads the same sample and lists what each file is missing, so with files from 20 to 60 fee earners the partner typically spends the days before the visit on the gaps, not on every page.

Not worth doing: AI giving legal advice, or setting a limitation date. Advice is the fee earner's to give; a model can point at a date in a letter, but a person sets it, and the rule stays where the insurer can see it.

All three need matter records that can be reached and changed without risk, which a system like this seldom offers before the first stage. The assessment shows which would pay back soonest on the firm's own matters.

Make it safe to change first, then one piece at a time, with the old system as the fallback throughout.

1. Stabilise. Source code, or the package's in-house scripts, found and matched to what the fee earners run, the database on a version still supported, the SharePoint farm inventoried down to each list, form and workflow, a backup restored on purpose, and a test copy that treats the client data as the personal data it is. This goes first because nothing that holds court deadlines gets changed without a copy to try the change on, and because the July 2026 dates are already behind it.
2. The matter in a browser. Key dates, tasks and the last note, reading and writing the existing database, with the old screens left as they are. Fee earners open it from court first, where the old one cannot go.
3. Documents off the farm. One department at a time, links kept, the old library read-only once its last matter has moved.
4. The billing posting, the precedent templates, the client view. Each a stage, each priced on its own, each live in weeks.
5. Retire the old system when nothing still depends on it. Expect the conflict check to go last, because everyone trusts the old one.

The assessment is from £395 + VAT, sized on a free one-hour consultation, with an exact price before you commit. For a case management system that means a few days with the fee earners, the cashier and the code, finding the rules and the risks, and a report with costed options and a fixed price for each. Each stage after that is priced before you commit to it. How we work, what drives the price and the payment terms each have a page, and so does each technology the system is built on: Microsoft Access, the .NET Framework, SQL Server, SharePoint and Crystal Reports, and for the newer generation React, Angular and Node and .NET Core.