01 / MTRMatter workspaces
A structured workspace per matter with consistent folders, metadata and lifecycle, provisioned automatically from intake rather than by hand.
Every matter in one governed place, on the Microsoft stack you already own.
Most firms already pay for Microsoft 365 and still keep matter files across drives, mailboxes and someone’s desktop. We build matter and document management on SharePoint itself: structured workspaces, real version history, retention you can defend, and access trimmed to the people who should see it. We have delivered exactly this for a practising law firm.
Why they call us
The software stopped being the thing that saves time.
The file is in four places
Drives, email, a practice management system and a partner’s desktop. Finding the current version of a document takes longer than drafting the next one.
Retention is a promise, not a process
Every firm has a retention policy. Very few can show, on demand, that a closed matter was actually disposed of on schedule.
Confidentiality depends on people remembering
Information barriers and conflict checks that live in habit rather than in the system are the ones that fail at the worst moment.
What’s in the platform
Eight modules. Turn on what you need, build what you don’t have.
Every organisation starts from the same core and diverges within weeks. The modules below are the starting point, not the ceiling.
Select a zone to see what it does
02 / DOCDocuments & precedents
Metadata-driven libraries with real version history, check-in and check-out, document generation from precedents, and search that works across the whole firm.
03 / TIMTime & billing
Time capture at the point of work, rates by matter and fee earner, disbursements, and billing that reconciles to your accounting system.
04 / TRUTrust accounting
Client money handled separately with the controls, reconciliations and audit records your regulator expects, and reporting built for the audit rather than after it.
05 / INTIntake & conflicts
One intake queue with conflict checking before a matter opens, engagement letter generation, and a decision record showing what was checked and by whom.
06 / TSKTasks & deadlines
Limitation dates, court deadlines and matter milestones with escalation, so a critical date is never dependent on one person’s diary.
07 / RETRetention & disposal
Retention schedules applied by matter type, legal holds that override them, and defensible disposal with a full record of what was destroyed and when.
08 / RPTReporting
Work in progress, realisation, matter profitability, fee earner utilisation and referral sources, from one dataset rather than three exports.
Customization
What’s standard, what’s configurable, what we build for you.
Most vendors stay vague about this until you are mid-contract. Here it is up front, so you can price the gap before you commit.
- Matter structure
- Workspace per matter, standard metadata
- Documents
- Version history, check-out, full-text search
- Security
- Permission-trimmed access, per-matter scoping
- Time & billing
- Time capture, rates, invoices
- Trust accounting
- Ledgers, receipts, reconciliation
- Retention
- Schedules by matter type, legal hold
- Integrations
- Microsoft 365, email, accounting
- Matter structure
- Folder templates, matter types, naming rules
- Documents
- Content types, metadata, precedent library
- Security
- Roles, information barriers, external sharing rules
- Time & billing
- Rate structures, billing cycles, write-off rules
- Trust accounting
- Account structures, approval thresholds
- Retention
- Retention periods, disposal approvals
- Integrations
- Credentials, sync frequency, field mapping
- Matter structure
- Practice-area specific workflows, court integrations
- Documents
- Automated document assembly, e-signature workflows
- Security
- Ethical walls with automated enforcement, DLP policies
- Time & billing
- Fixed-fee and contingency models, e-billing formats
- Trust accounting
- Jurisdiction-specific trust reporting and audit formats
- Retention
- Cross-jurisdiction rules, archive migration
- Integrations
- Court filing systems, legacy DMS migration
The AI layer
Where a custom build earns its cost.
Off-the-shelf systems bolt a chatbot onto a decade-old database. We build the intelligence into the workflow, using the same engineering we ship for enterprise clients on Azure AI.
Knowledge
Precedent and know-how search
A retrieval assistant grounded in your own document library, permission-trimmed so it can only surface what the asker is already allowed to open. It cites the source document every time.
Review
Document summarisation
Long agreements and bundles summarised with the key dates, parties and obligations pulled out, as a starting point for a lawyer rather than a substitute for one.
Drafting
Clause and obligation extraction
Extracts clauses and obligations into a structured schedule, which is the tedious half of contract review and the half most prone to human fatigue.
Intake
Enquiry triage
Reads inbound enquiries, classifies practice area and urgency, runs a preliminary conflict check and routes to the right team with a human confirming.
Time
Time capture assistance
Suggests time entries from document and email activity against the matter, so unbilled work is recovered without anyone reconstructing a week from memory.
Operations
Ask your data
A grounded assistant over matter and billing data. "Which matter types had the worst realisation last quarter?" answered from your records, with the query shown.
Integrations
It has to live with the systems you already bought.
We integrate rather than replace, so what already works keeps working.
Microsoft
- SharePoint Online
- Microsoft 365
- Outlook & Exchange
- Teams
- Entra ID single sign-on
- Power BI
Practice
- E-signature
- Court filing portals
- Legal research tools
- PDF & bundling tools
- Secure client portals
Money
- Xero
- MYOB
- QuickBooks
- Card & trust receipting
- E-billing formats
Compliance & data
Built to survive the questions your adviser will ask.
Privilege and confidentiality
Permission-trimmed access down to the matter, information barriers that are enforced by the system rather than by convention, and external sharing controlled and logged.
Trust accounting obligations
Built to support state bar trust account rules in the United States and law society trust accounting requirements in Australia, with the reconciliations and audit trail an external examiner asks for.
Defensible retention
Retention schedules by matter type, legal holds that survive them, and a disposal record proving what was destroyed, when and under whose authority.
How the build runs
From first call to first live site.
Week 1–2
Discovery and information architecture
We map practice areas, matter types, metadata and who must not see what. The information architecture is the whole project in legal, so we do it before touching SharePoint.
Week 3–6
Core build
Matter workspaces, document libraries, metadata, security model and intake stood up in your own Microsoft 365 tenancy.
Week 7–10
Migration and integrations
Existing matter files migrated with metadata applied, email and accounting connected, and a reconciliation report you sign off.
Week 11–12
Pilot team and training
One practice group goes live with us on hand, fee earners and support staff trained, then a two-week hypercare window before the firm follows.
Ongoing
Support and roadmap
A named engineer, an agreed response SLA, and a quarterly cycle where you decide what gets built next. It runs in your tenancy, so you own it outright.
Questions
What owners ask us first.
Why build on SharePoint instead of buying a legal DMS?
Because you are already paying for it, and the security, retention and search you need are already in the platform. A dedicated DMS makes sense for large firms with deep practice-specific requirements. For most small and mid-size firms, SharePoint configured properly does the job without a second licence stack.
Have you actually delivered this?
Yes. We built SharePoint document and matter management for a practising law firm, including structured matter workspaces, metadata-driven libraries, versioning, permission-trimmed access and retention policies.
Can it enforce information barriers between teams?
Yes. Permission trimming is standard, and automated ethical walls with enforcement are a scoped custom item. The important part is that the barrier lives in the system rather than in staff remembering the rule.
What happens to our existing files?
Migration is a defined phase. The hard part is not moving the files, it is applying the right metadata so the new structure is actually usable, which is why the information architecture comes first.
Does the AI see privileged material?
Only what the person asking can already open. Retrieval is permission-trimmed at query time, answers cite their sources, and you choose whether any content is processed outside your tenancy at all.
Does it handle trust accounting for our jurisdiction?
Core trust ledgers, receipting and reconciliation are standard. Jurisdiction-specific reporting and audit formats are scoped during discovery, because the requirements differ meaningfully between US states and Australian states.
Can we start with one practice group?
That is the approach we recommend. One group proves the structure and the migration, then the rest of the firm follows a pattern that is already working.
See it running before you decide anything.
Thirty minutes, a working demo build, and an honest answer about whether a custom platform is right for you. If off-the-shelf is the better call, we will say so.
You’ll speak with engineers, not account managers.