Your law firm runs on four SaaS tools that don't talk to each other. Billing is in one place, time tracking in another, documents in a third, and client records in a spreadsheet.

Off-the-shelf practice management platforms are built for the common billing model: hourly rates, flat fees, and simple trust accounting. When your firm has contingency splits, tiered fee arrangements, originating attorney compensation rules, or matter structures that don't map to the standard case type taxonomy, the platform either can't support the model or requires workarounds that introduce errors. The other limit is branding and client experience. Every client portal on Clio looks like Clio. Your clients are interacting with your firm's brand through a vendor's generic interface. Custom software gives you a client-facing product that carries your firm's identity, enforces your workflow, and handles your specific billing rules without compromise. That said, if your billing model is standard and you are under 20 timekeepers, Clio or MyCase is probably the right answer and we will tell you that in the first call. Custom development is the right investment when the generic platforms have a measurable cost in workflow friction or billing errors.

A focused client portal with matter status, document sharing, and secure messaging typically runs $25,000--$45,000. A practice management system covering matters, time tracking, billing, and trust accounting runs $45,000--$80,000. Contract lifecycle management with workflow routing, obligation tracking, and renewal alerts runs $35,000--$65,000. A full platform integrating practice management, document management, client portal, and legal CRM runs $80,000--$130,000. These ranges depend on the number of integrations, the complexity of your billing rules, and whether you need a mobile app alongside the web platform. Every project is fixed price, agreed before development starts. Request a 30-min call and we will scope your specific requirements.

Trust accounting in legal software requires strict separation of client funds from operating funds, a complete ledger per client matter, three-way reconciliation between the trust ledger, individual client sub-accounts, and the bank statement, and an immutable audit trail of every transaction. We build trust accounting modules that enforce these rules at the data layer, not just the UI. Deposits, disbursements, and transfers between trust and operating accounts require explicit approval workflows. The three-way reconciliation runs automatically at period end and flags discrepancies before a manual review. Every transaction is logged with the timestamp, user, matter number, and the previous balance. The audit trail is exportable for bar association review. We scope trust accounting requirements during discovery with your bookkeeper or controller because the rules vary by state bar, and the software must match the specific reconciliation format your bar requires.

Yes. The most common integrations we build are with NetDocuments, iManage Work, and SharePoint for document storage and retrieval; Worldox for firms on legacy DMS platforms; and Box or Google Drive for smaller firms. Integration scope covers document creation from matter templates, automatic filing into the correct matter folder, version control, check-in and check-out workflows, and full-text search across the document library from within the practice management interface. For firms without an existing DMS, we build document management directly into the custom platform with the same functionality, eliminating the integration layer. The key question during discovery is whether you need to maintain the existing DMS (because other parts of the firm use it for non-legal documents) or whether a clean-slate document module within the custom platform is the right approach. We walk through that decision with your IT team and your managing partner before the design phase.

A focused single-scope project, a client portal or a contract repository, typically runs 10-12 weeks. A practice management system with billing, matter tracking, and document management runs 12-16 weeks. A full platform integrating practice management, document management, client portal, and legal CRM runs 16-22 weeks depending on the number of data migrations and third-party integrations. The timeline starts with a one-week discovery: workflow mapping with the attorneys and staff who will use the system daily, billing model documentation, integration assessment, and a fixed-price proposal. Development does not start without your sign-off on the scope document. You see working software at bi-weekly sprint demos throughout the project, not only at the end.

Yes. Data migration is scoped as part of the discovery phase because the complexity varies significantly by source system. Migrating from Clio or MyCase involves their export APIs and the mapping of their data model to the custom schema. Migrating from a spreadsheet-based system requires data cleaning and validation before import. Migrating from a legacy desktop application requires extraction tooling. In all cases, we run the migration against a staging environment first, validate record counts and field values against the source, and run a parallel period where both systems are live before the cutover. The parallel period is non-negotiable for billing data: you need to verify that the new system produces the same invoices as the old system before you switch over. We do not cut over to production until your billing team has confirmed the numbers match.