WoolsackOpen the demoEvery matter, every deadline, and the dates that end a claim.
Matter management, conflict searching, time recording and billing, built around the way a file actually runs in practice — not a generic CRM with the words changed.
No sign-up, nothing to install. A fictional firm with fictional clients — open anything you like.
| Harrison v Meridian Logistics | 47 days |
| Meridian Care Homes — lease renewal | 19 days |
| Okafor v Brightline Retail | 72 days |
Three things go wrong on a file, and they go wrong everywhere.
Whatever a firm runs on, the same three failures cause the claims, the write-offs and the awkward conversations with the insurer.
Nobody owns the deadline
A key date lives in one fee earner's calendar, or in the back of one person's mind. When they are on holiday, or they leave, it lives nowhere at all.
Conflicts are checked by memory
Someone searches the client list. Nobody searches the opponents, because the opponents were never recorded anywhere searchable in the first place.
Time is remembered, not recorded
Written up on Friday for the whole week. Recovery drops, bills go out late, and the work in progress figure on the report is a guess.
Ten modules, one file.
Everything hangs off the matter, so opening a file shows the whole picture: the deadlines, the tasks, the time, the disbursements, the documents, the parties and the money.
Matters
Every file with its client, work type, fee earner, funding basis, court reference and costs estimate — with the estimate burning down as time is recorded against it.
Tasks & deadlines
Assigned, prioritised and dated. Overdue work is coloured, counted in the sidebar and pushed to the front of the dashboard rather than waiting to be looked for.
Time recording
Six-minute units, the way time is actually kept. Rates are captured on each entry, so a rate rise next year cannot silently reprice work already done.
Billing
Raise a bill from unbilled time and disbursements in one action. Profit costs and disbursements are kept apart because they are not treated the same way.
Clients
The client register with contact details, matter history, outstanding balance and the state of their due diligence in one view.
Documents
Filed against the matter with version history. Filing under an existing name supersedes the previous version rather than sitting beside it.
Contacts
Opposing solicitors, counsel, experts and courts — held once, linked to the matters they appear on, and searched by the conflict check.
Dashboard
What is overdue, what is coming, what is unbilled, what is owed, and which fee earner is carrying what. The morning position on one screen.
The four things a generic system will not do for you.
Any developer can build a list of matters. These are the parts that need somebody to have read the Code of Conduct.
Conflict searching
One search runs across every client, every recorded party on every matter, every contact and every matter title at once. It catches the case where a company is your client on one file and the opponent on another — the conflict a name-by-name look through a spreadsheet is most likely to miss.
A nil return is recorded too, so the file shows the check was carried out.
Client due diligence that actually gates the work
Identity verification, risk rating and source of funds sit on the client record. A matter cannot be opened for a client whose due diligence is incomplete — refused by the system, not by a policy nobody reads.
Enforced server-side, so it holds however the request arrives.
Limitation date as a first-class field
Not a note in a file, not a line in a diary. A dedicated field with its own warning window, its own dashboard tile, and a banner on the matter itself from ninety days out.
Missed limitation dates are the largest single source of professional negligence claims in England and Wales.
Audit trail
Every change writes an immutable line: who, what, when. Status changes, payments recorded, due diligence updated, documents filed.
The record Lexcel accreditation and professional indemnity insurers ask for.
This system does not hold client money.
There is no trust account and no part of the SRA Accounts Rulesimplemented anywhere in it. That is deliberate. Handling client money is the highest-risk thing a firm does, and it belongs in accounting software built and audited for that purpose.
What this does instead is record time, raise bills and track what is outstanding — then hand the figures to whatever you already use. Your accounts stay where they are.
Built to fit the firm, not the other way round.
What you are looking at is a demonstration, not a package to be bought off a shelf. The system delivered to a firm is shaped around how that firm actually runs.
What you are looking at
- A working system, not a set of screenshots — the conflict search really searches, the bills really calculate, the deadlines really count down
- Loaded with a fictional firm so that nothing needs setting up before you can look
- Built to show the reasoning: why a limitation date deserves its own field, why due diligence should block file opening
- Every part of it open to being changed
What a firm would get
- The modules your practice actually needs, in your terminology, following your file-opening and supervision procedures
- Your existing data migrated in, and your people trained on it
- The source code handed over, so you are never dependent on one developer remaining available
- Ongoing support at a fixed monthly fee, with changes quoted separately
One thing it will not do, whatever the firm: hold client money. That stays with your accounts package, for the reasons above.
Have a look around, then tell me what is wrong with it.
The demo is loaded with a fictional firm — matters mid-flight, deadlines approaching, bills unpaid. Open a matter, record some time, raise a bill, run a conflict search. Nothing you do affects anything real.
If it is close but not quite right for how your firm runs, that is the useful conversation. It is built to be shaped around a practice.
Or write to hello@codecart.org