Legal Practices
Take on more matters without adding administrators.
Intake, conflict checks, matter records and the deadlines attached to them still run on people remembering, and the enquiry that never became a client is not written down anywhere. We build the CRM and the matter systems underneath a growing firm, and keep a named lawyer on every decision the rules put there.
What it costs today
The searching, the assembling and the remembering is the expensive part
None of it is legal work and all of it is done by people who could be doing legal work. Seven patterns turn up in almost every firm we map.
There is no CRM, or there is one and nobody uses it
You cannot say where your last twenty matters came from.The conflict search is as good as the last person who ran it
A check you ran and cannot show you ran properly.The matter lives in a folder, an inbox and somebody's head
Twenty minutes of assembling before every client call.A limitation date sits in one person's diary
A deadline that depends on one person being at work.Time is reconstructed on Friday afternoon
Clio puts average utilization at 38 percent, or three billable hours in an eight hour day.
Work you did, and will never bill.AI is already in the building and nothing is written down about it
ABA Formal Opinion 512 puts the obligations on the firm either way.
Client information in a place the firm has never scoped.The operating pattern
Give the system the searching and keep the judgment
Repeatable work goes to the system. Advice, acceptance and anything a client or a court will see goes to a named lawyer. The line between them is written down before anything is built.
- 01
The same work arrives again
An enquiry, a party, a document, a date, a bundle. Every one handled as though it were the first.
- 02
The system takes the searching and the assembling
None of it is judgment, which is what makes it safe to hand over.
- 03
A lawyer takes the decisions and the advice
Whether to take the matter, whether a conflict can be waived, what a document means.
See it run
One enquiry, seven systems, one decision left to a lawyer
Watch an enquiry arrive, get matched against the firm CRM, run a conflict search across every matter the firm has ever held, and stop at the point where accepting the work is a professional judgment.
Matter Intake and CRM
- Input
- Context
- AI work
- Action
- Approval
- Recorded
Connected systems
- CRM Prospects, clients, referrers updated
- Email and web Enquiry capture updated
- Practice management Matters and time updated
- Documents Files and templates updated
- Conflict database Parties and entities updated
- Calendar Limitation dates updated
- Billing Client and matter setup updated
Enquiry Meridian Property Group Commercial lease dispute
- Enquiry received Website form, 09:14
- 4 files attached Lease, notice, thread, registry extract
- Organization matched Existing relationship, not a cold enquiry
- 3 contacts, 2 prior enquiries Referred by an existing client
- Matter history pulled 1 closed matter, 2023. Nothing open
- 5 parties extracted From the lease and the email thread
- Matter type classified Commercial litigation, lease dispute
- Conflict search run 5 names against 4,180 matters
- Search clear No party, related entity or former client
- Critical date found Clause 14.2, notice served 18 September
- CRM intake record updated Parties, matter type and date written back
- 7 documents classified Filed to the enquiry, not to a matter
- Matter draft prepared No number issued, time recording closed
- Held for a lawyer Acceptance is not a system decision
- Run recorded Search, sources and rule versions stored
On acceptance
- CRM Prospect becomes client, enquiry becomes engagement
- Practice management Matter 2026-0184 created
- Documents 7 files transferred to the matter
- Calendar Critical date and two reminders added
- Billing Client and matter record opened
Result
Intake prepared Everything except the acceptance decision is done.
- CRM relationship Existing
- Parties extracted 5
- Matters searched 4,180
- Conflict search Clear
- Matter type Commercial litigation
- Critical date 18 September
Completed automatically
- CRM record updated
- Parties linked to the organization
- 7 documents classified
- Critical date extracted
- Conflict search recorded
- Matter draft prepared
- Lawyer review task created
Requires a person
Matter acceptance and the engagement letter.
Supervising lawyer, commercial litigation
Request informationDecline
Stand in for the lawyer and watch one record move into five systems.
View audit trail
- 09:14 Enquiry received. Source: website form, unauthenticated.
- 09:14 CRM matched on registered number. Relationship history attached.
- 09:15 Conflict search run on 5 names against 4,180 matters. Result: clear. Query and result set stored.
- 09:15 Critical date derived from clause 14.2. Source clause cited on the file.
- 09:15 Held for acceptance. No matter number issued, no engagement letter sent.
Connected systems
- CRM Prospects, clients, referrers updated
- Email and web Enquiry capture updated
- Practice management Matters and time updated
- Documents Files and templates updated
- Conflict database Parties and entities updated
- Calendar Limitation dates updated
- Billing Client and matter setup updated
Enquiry Calderway Retail Ltd Lease dispute, unknown counterparty
- Enquiry received 4 of 11 fields completed
- No lease attached Email thread only, 3 messages
- No organization match New prospect record opened
- No matter history Neither party appears in past work
- 2 parties extracted Taken from email signatures
- Conflict search run 2 names against 4,180 matters
- Search recorded as partial A lease dispute usually names a guarantor and a director
- Limitation date not derived No lease, so no notice clause. Nothing estimated
- 3 missing items identified Against the firm intake rules
- CRM prospect updated Marked incomplete with the three gaps named
- Information request drafted Three items, each with the reason it is needed
- Held for the intake clerk Nothing here sends client correspondence on its own
- Run recorded Gaps logged against the enquiry with reasons
Result
Intake incomplete One of the missing items decides a limitation date, so nothing was filled in.
- CRM relationship New prospect
- Parties extracted 2
- Conflict search Partial
- Missing items 3
- Limitation date Not derived
- Dates estimated 0
Completed automatically
- CRM prospect record created
- Partial conflict search recorded
- Three gaps named against the enquiry
- Information request drafted
- Follow-up task created
Requires a person
Send the request, or escalate the missing date.
Intake clerk, supervising lawyer copied
Send the requestEdit it firstEscalate
View audit trail
- 16:52 Enquiry received. 4 of 11 fields completed.
- 16:52 CRM search returned no match. Prospect created.
- 16:53 Conflict search run on 2 names. Clear on those two, recorded as partial.
- 16:53 Limitation date not derived. Reason: source document absent. No value written.
- 16:53 Held for the intake clerk. No matter opened, no correspondence sent.
Connected systems
- CRM Prospects, clients, referrers updated
- Email and web Enquiry capture updated
- Practice management Matters and time updated
- Documents Files and templates updated
- Conflict database Parties and entities updated
- Calendar Limitation dates updated
- Billing Client and matter setup updated
Enquiry Harbourgate Ventures Ltd Development funding agreement
- Enquiry received Referral, entered by reception
- Draft contract attached 19 pages, three counterparties
- Organization matched Prospect from 2025, never converted
- Matter history pulled 4,180 matters, open and closed
- 7 parties extracted Including two former company names
- Conflict search run 7 names, matched on registered number
- Match found Atlas Developments Ltd, opposing party, matter 2024-193
- Second relationship found A director of the enquirer sat on the Atlas board until 2023
- CRM enquiry updated Locked to the conflicts partner
- Conflict report written What matched, on what basis, with the evidence
- Matter creation stopped No classification, no dates, no engagement letter
- Held for the conflicts partner A match is evidence, not a decision
- Run recorded Both matches stored with their sources
Result
Matter creation blocked The firm may still be able to act, with informed consent or a screen. That is a lawyer call.
- CRM relationship Prior prospect
- Parties extracted 7
- Matters searched 4,180
- Conflict search Match found
- Related relationship Former director
- Matters opened 0
Completed automatically
- CRM enquiry updated and locked
- Conflict report written with its evidence
- Director relationship recorded separately
- Partner review task created
Requires a person
Whether the conflict can be waived, and whether the firm wants to.
Conflicts partner
Review the reportClear with consentDecline
View audit trail
- 14:02 Enquiry received. Source: referral, entered by reception.
- 14:02 Conflict search run on 7 party names.
- 14:02 Match: Atlas Developments Ltd, registered number 07742119, matter 2024-193, opposing party.
- 14:02 Second match: director relationship, sourced from a registry extract dated March 2023.
- 14:03 Intake halted under the firm conflict rule. Enquiry locked to the conflicts partner.
This demo uses fictional data. The workflow gets configured around your systems. Build a workflow like this
The work
Four workflows, and the order they usually go in
The four asked for most often. Each names what it touches and where a lawyer stays in control.
Matter intake and conflict review
One pass from enquiry to a file a lawyer can accept or decline
- Searches every party against open and closed matters, not the current client list
- Extracts the dates with the clause they came from cited
- Stops at acceptance no matter opens without a lawyer
Human: a lawyer accepts, declines or clears the conflict.
A CRM built for how a firm wins work
The half before the client says yes, built around referral relationships rather than a sales pipeline
- One record per enquiry phone, referral, website or a partner's inbox
- Referral sources, measured which relationships send work you win
- Follow-up that runs the enquiry nobody chased is the cheapest matter you never opened
Human: a lawyer decides what the firm pursues.
Document and deadline workflow
The file assembles itself while the matter runs
- Everything lands on the matter visible to whoever is covering
- Dates surfaced with their source the clause, not a diary entry
- Standard documents assembled for a lawyer to check and settle
Human: a lawyer settles anything that goes out.
What the firm earned, billed and collected
The gap between the work done and the money in
Clio's 2025 report tracks three billable hours captured in an eight hour day, 2.6 invoiced, 2.4 collected, and a median total lockup of 93 days. This makes your firm's own version of those numbers visible while there is still time to act on them.
- Time captured as it happens rather than reconstructed on a Friday
- Write-offs made visible by matter type, before the year end
- Lockup tracked per matter the bill never raised is the expensive one
Human: partners decide what to write off and what to chase.
The CRM is often the cheaper first build, and it is the one firms skip. A firm that cannot say which referrer sent its last twenty matters is guessing at the thing it most needs to be right about, and nothing in that build touches a matter, a limitation date or a conflict.
Confidentiality and supervision
Six decisions taken before anything is built
Confidentiality is a design input rather than a review at the end. These six get agreed with whoever owns risk in the firm, and between them they decide what the workflow is allowed to be.
- Confidentiality boundary
- Which matters a workflow can see, which fields stay masked, what never leaves your systems.
- Client disclosure
- Whether your retainer or a client's instructions require you to say a tool is used. Your firm decides.
- Lawyer supervision Kept human
- Which outputs a named lawyer reviews before they reach a client, a court or the other side. ABA Formal Opinion 512 puts competence, confidentiality and supervision on the lawyer rather than the tool.
- Deployment route
- Pilot, private tenant or dedicated. Same workflow, different wall.
- Audit trail
- What was searched, what came back, who approved it and what was refused. Logged from the first pilot.
- Escalation path
- A workflow with no escalation path escalates to whoever notices.
What counts as working. Accepted output against your own baseline, with the supervision burden counted openly, because a system that produces plenty and has to be checked twice has saved nothing. How we measure AI work sets out the method.
Deployment
The environment follows the sensitivity of the file
The workflow is identical in all three, so this is a decision about isolation and cost rather than about capability.
Governed pilot
For Non-privileged or masked data, access controlled, every run logged.
You receive Fastest route to a workflow the firm can judge.
Private tenant
For Matter data in an environment of its own, no shared surface.
You receive A single-client environment provisioned for the firm.
Dedicated or on premises
For The most sensitive files, or a client whose terms decide where their information sits.
You receive Highest control, higher cost, justified by what it holds.
Integration comes first in all three. We connect to the practice management system, the document store and the accounting you already run, so the workflow lives inside your stack.
How it starts
One workflow, proved, before anything bigger
Roughly eight to twelve weeks from the first session to a workflow running against a baseline you set. The mapping at the front is a decision you can act on whether or not we build anything.
- Map the work
- Two to three weeks. Where the time and the exposure actually sit. This is FusionMap.
- Set the rules
- About two weeks. Confidentiality, masking, access, supervision and disclosure, signed off first. This is FusionGuard.
- Build one workflow
- Four to six weeks, in the environment the data called for.
- Train and operate
- Ongoing. Then the next workflow, if the first one earned it.
Proof
Where this has already been built
The approach on this page comes out of these four engagements. One is a legal firm, and the other three are where each half of the design was proved.
A digital readiness audit for a law clerk firm
Standalone databases that did not talk to each other. We audited the operation and built a roadmap the firm could take to any implementer.
4 pillars documents, workflow, data, reporting Sequenced with platforms and budget against each
Read the case study A client profiling engine with the approval kept human
An intake questionnaire becomes a profile and a recommendation. Every output waits in an approval queue before a client sees it.
Under 5 min form to a review ready file 8 weeks concept to a deployed platform
Read the case study Research that arrives before the call
Territory research a team used to do by hand now lands every morning without anyone triggering it.
550+ districts researched per territory 3 agents kept running and updated
Read the case study A payments platform where the controls were the product
An escrow exchange built from nothing, for people sending money to counterparties they have no reason to trust.
Full stack designed, built and deployed Escrow funds held until both sides are satisfied
Read the case study Begine Fusion is a Zoho Authorized Partner working across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Nigeria. Every engagement is published in full, including what was measured and what was a design target. The full set is on our work.
Fit
Whether this is the right conversation yet
The work pays back when a process repeats often enough that consistency is a real exposure. If that is not where you are, the right column says what to do instead.
This fits if
- Intake, conflict checks or file assembly repeat often enough to be worth writing down
- The administrative load is growing faster than the fees
- You are shopping for a CRM, or you bought one and nobody uses it
- You want to know where your matters come from, and the answer is a guess
- People are already using AI unofficially and you would rather it were governed
- Somebody in the firm can own the supervision decisions
Start somewhere else if
- You do not yet know which part of the operation costs the most. Go to FusionMap and find out before commissioning a build.
- What you need first is a written position on where AI may and may not be used on client work. That is FusionGuard, and it costs less than the build it governs.
- You are looking for someone to tell you what your regulator or law society requires. We build to a requirement. We do not set one.
- Nobody is looking after the systems you already have. Go to Managed Operations.
Where to start
Start where the problem is
The same five offers every other client buys, scoped to a sector where the obligation is personal. Find the line that sounds like your firm.
No price is quoted on this page. A sector is not an offer and has no price of its own. Every page above carries its own numbers, and working out which line is yours is what the first call is for.
Questions
Asked on every call with a firm
Answered before the proposal rather than inside it.
Does any of this give legal advice?
No, and a build partner who says otherwise is selling you a problem. Everything here is operational: searching your own records, extracting a date and citing its clause, assembling a file, drafting a first version. What a document means and whether a conflict can be waived are legal judgments, and they stay with a named lawyer.
How does this sit with our professional obligations?
ABA Formal Opinion 512, July 2024, is the clearest statement: a lawyer using a generative tool still owes competence, confidentiality and supervision, and managing lawyers have to put a firm policy in place. Your bar or law society may say more. We build to whatever your obligations are. We do not tell you what your regulator requires.
What happens to privileged and confidential client information?
Where it sits, which matters and fields a workflow can see, who reads the log and how long anything is kept are decided before a line of the build exists. Those decisions belong to the firm. We build to them, write them down so a client or an auditor can be shown them, and tell you when two things you have asked for are incompatible.
Do we have to replace our practice management system?
Usually not. We connect to what you already run through governed access, so the workflow lives inside your stack rather than beside it. Replacing it is a decision with its own business case, and if the mapping says that is your real problem we will say so first.
We are looking at a CRM. Is that the same project as all this?
Same record, different piece of work. The CRM holds the enquiry, the referrer and what happened next. Practice management holds the matter. The two connect rather than compete, and most CRMs fail in firms because they arrive configured for a sales team with a quota. One thing to check in any legal CRM demo: the published templates we reviewed, the vendors' own and the packaged versions sold by implementers, run an enquiry straight through to an open matter with nothing in between that is able to stop it. The path is right and the gate is missing, and the gate is the part your firm is accountable for.
How do we know it worked?
A baseline is taken before the build exists: current time, review effort, rework and cost on that specific work. The same work is measured against it afterwards, with the supervision burden counted openly, because a system that produces plenty and needs checking twice has saved nothing.
How long before anything is running?
Roughly eight to twelve weeks from the first session to one workflow running against a baseline you set. Ahead of that sits the mapping that decides which workflow is worth building first, which is two to three weeks and produces a decision you can act on whether or not we do the build.
Bring the part of the firm that grows fastest when the work does
Thirty minutes with a partner, whoever owns risk, and whoever currently holds intake together is enough to name the first workflow, the supervision it needs and the baseline it gets measured against.