Build a legal system around your matters and your hearing diary.
A practice runs on dates. The next date, the limitation date, the date the written statement is due, and the date the client was last told anything at all.
Those dates live in a clerk’s diary, and the diary goes to court with the clerk. A matter is adjourned at a quarter past eleven, and the client hears it from the other side by evening.
A practice system built by GullySystem puts the matter at the centre. Court, stage, next date, the draft as it stands today, the appearance nobody billed, and the client who is waiting to be told.
Legal practices we can build for.
Two advocates sharing a clerk, or a firm with a litigation team, a corporate team and three branch offices. The scope follows the matters you handle, not the letterhead.
- Litigation chambers
- Corporate law firms
- Full-service law firms
- Advocates in independent practice
- Senior counsel offices
- Property and conveyancing practices
- Family law practices
- Criminal law practices
- Tax and indirect tax practices
- Labour and employment practices
- Intellectual property firms
- Arbitration and dispute resolution practices
- Company secretarial firms
- Legal process and documentation companies
- In-house legal departments
- Bank and financial institution panel advocates
- Debt recovery practices
- Multi-branch law firms
The modules, and what each one covers.
Nothing here is a fixed package. Each module is built, left out or changed to match how your organisation already works.
The matter file
One record per matter, and everything else in the system hangs off it.
- Matter title and internal reference
- Client and opposite party
- Court, bench and forum
- Case number and year
- CNR number
- Nature of matter
- Current stage
- Advocate in charge
- Juniors and clerk assigned
- Fee arrangement
- Date of filing
- Status of the matter
Courts, forums and stages
Your own list, because a tribunal practice and a district court practice do not share a vocabulary.
- District and sessions courts
- High Court benches
- Tribunals and commissions
- Consumer forums
- Arbitration panels
- Revenue and departmental authorities
- Stage list per forum
- Court hall and judge
- Filing counter and process
- Local practice notes
Hearing diary
- Next date recorded
- Cause list checked
- Day’s list prepared
- Appearance
- Proceedings noted
- Next date entered
- Client informed
The diary stops being one person’s property. If the clerk is on leave, the office can still say what is listed tomorrow.
The day’s list
- Matters listed today
- Court hall and item number
- Advocate appearing
- Counsel briefed
- Papers to carry
- Instructions from the client
- Outcome recorded
- Adjournment reason
- New date
Case tracking
- Order and judgment record
- Interlocutory applications
- Caveats
- Notices issued and received
- Summons and service status
- Objections and replies
- Evidence and witnesses
- Arguments
- Disposal
- Appeal and execution
Pulling a next date automatically from a court website depends entirely on what that site publishes and permits. Where it cannot be read, the clerk enters it, and the system says which matters have not been updated.
Limitation and deadlines
The date that does not appear on any cause list, and matters most.
- Limitation date per matter
- Filing due date
- Written statement due
- Reply and rejoinder due
- Appeal period
- Renewal and registration dates
- Statutory notice periods
- Reminder before the date
- Escalation to the partner in charge
The system reminds. It does not compute a limitation period for you, because that is a judgement your firm makes on the facts of the matter.
Client and party records
- Client profile
- Individual or company
- Group of companies
- Contact persons
- Matters held for this client
- Fee arrangement
- Billing address and GST number
- Opposite parties
- Related parties
- Engagement letter
- Conflict check reference
Conflict checks
A search across parties before a matter is accepted, run on what the firm has recorded.
- Search by party name
- Search by group
- Past and present matters
- Opposite party history
- Related entities
- Result recorded against the matter
- Partner sign-off
A conflict check is only as good as the names in the system. It supports the partner’s decision, it does not make it.
Documents and drafts
A sale deed in an almirah, the latest draft in a junior’s email, the client’s photographs in a March chat. One place, instead.
- Document type and matter
- Version history
- Draft, reviewed and final
- Who last edited
- Client-supplied documents
- Certified copies from the registry
- Vakalatnama
- Affidavits
- Annexures and exhibits
- Search by content
- Access restricted by matter
Drafting workflow
- Instruction
- Junior draft
- Senior review
- Client comments
- Revision
- Approved draft
- Engrossment and filing
Precedents and templates
- Standard drafts by matter type
- Clause library
- Notices and replies
- Agreements
- Applications
- Firm-approved formats
- Version and owner
- Usage record
- Restricted templates
Time and work records
For practices that bill by the hour, and for those that simply want to know where the week went.
- Time entry by matter
- Activity type
- Drafting, conference, research and appearance
- Billable and non-billable
- Daily timesheet
- Weekly summary
- Unposted time
- Time by fee earner
- Time by client
Appearances and unbilled work
Appearances and drafting go unbilled because nothing links the work to a fee note. Over a year that is real money.
- Appearance recorded per hearing
- Advocate who appeared
- Counsel engaged
- Effective hearing or adjournment
- Agreed appearance fee
- Unbilled appearances list
- Unbilled drafting
- Ageing of unbilled work
Fee arrangements
- Retainer
- Per appearance
- Per matter lump sum
- Hourly rate by fee earner
- Stage-linked fees
- Advance against fees
- Success-linked arrangements, which the rules restrict
- Rate revision date
- Arrangement recorded against the matter
What fee arrangements an advocate may enter into is governed by the rules of the profession, and success-linked fees in particular are restricted. The system records what your firm has decided to charge, on its own advice, and takes no view on it.
Fee notes and billing
- Fee note from recorded work
- Matter-wise billing
- Consolidated client billing
- Out-of-pocket expenses
- Court fees and process fees
- Counsel fees passed through
- Travel and stay
- GST treatment
- TDS deducted by the client
- Credit notes
- Fee note approval by the partner
Receipts and outstanding
- Payments received
- Advance adjustment
- Client-wise outstanding
- Matter-wise outstanding
- Ageing
- Reminders
- Write-off with approval
- Statement of account
- Receipt to the client
Client updates
The call the office dreads is the client asking what happened this morning.
- Update after each hearing
- Next date intimation
- Order copy shared
- Document request
- Instruction sought
- Conference scheduled
- Update history per matter
- Who spoke to the client last
What is shared with a client is decided matter by matter. Nothing goes out of the system without somebody in the firm releasing it.
Client portal
- Matters and current stage
- Next hearing date
- Proceedings summary
- Documents released to the client
- Fee notes and receipts
- Outstanding amount
- Upload documents
- Raise a query
- Conference requests
Advocate and clerk application
What is needed in a corridor outside court, on a phone, in two minutes.
- Today’s list
- Matter summary
- Last order
- Record the outcome
- Enter the next date
- Photograph an order copy
- Note an expense
- Call the client
- Task assigned to me
Tasks and assignments
- Task per matter
- Assigned to a junior or clerk
- Due date
- Priority
- Filing tasks
- Certified copy applications at the registry
- Process and summons follow-up
- Completion record
- Overdue tasks by person
Corporate and advisory work
For firms whose work never reaches a court.
- Advisory matters
- Opinions issued
- Contract drafting and review
- Due diligence
- Regulatory filings
- Trademark and IP renewals
- Secretarial calendars
- Closing checklists
- Deliverable tracking
Arbitration and mediation
- Tribunal composition
- Sitting dates
- Pleadings schedule
- Documents filed
- Sitting fees
- Venue and costs
- Award and challenge
- Enforcement
Recovery and panel work
For advocates on bank and finance panels, where volume is the problem.
- Portfolio upload
- Borrower and account details
- Notice generation in bulk
- Filing status per account
- Hearing dates in bulk
- Recovery status
- Bank reporting formats
- Fee claim per account
- Account closure
Knowledge and research
- Case notes
- Citations used
- Judgments relied upon
- Internal research notes
- Subject tagging
- Search across past matters
- Author and date
- Sharing within the firm
Roles and access
Privilege is the whole point, so access is decided matter by matter and not by department.
- Managing partner
- Partner
- Senior associate
- Associate and junior
- Clerk
- Office administrator
- Accounts
- Client
Confidentiality and audit trail
- Matter-level access
- Restricted matters
- Document download record
- Who viewed a file
- Edits to a draft
- Changes to a hearing date
- Fee note changes
- Client portal activity
- Login history
Branches and teams
- Office-wise matters
- Court-wise matters
- Team-wise workload
- Fee earner utilisation
- Matters opened and closed
- Billing by office
- Collections by office
- Consolidated partner view
Management reporting
- Matters listed this week
- Adjournments by court
- Matters without a next date
- Limitation dates approaching
- Unbilled work by matter
- Fee notes raised
- Collections and ageing
- Realisation by client
- Matters opened by practice area
- Work in progress by fee earner
Integrations
- WhatsApp and SMS providers
- Calendar applications
- Cloud document storage
- Tally and accounting software
- Payment gateways
- Digital signature providers
- Scanning and document capture
Reading a cause list from a court portal is checked court by court. Some publish usable data, some publish a picture of a page, and we say which is which before building.
One connected workflow, end to end.
Every stage below can sit in one system, so nobody re-enters what the last stage already captured.
- Enquiry
- Conflict check
- Engagement
- Matter opened
- Filing
- Hearing dates
- Drafting and review
- Appearances
- Client updates
- Orders and judgment
- Fee note
- Collection
- Matter closed
You do not have to replace everything at once.
Each phase is usable on its own, so the system earns its place before the next part is built.
- 1
Matters and dates
The matter file, courts and stages, the hearing diary and the day’s list. A chamber is better off the week this much works.
- 2
Documents
Drafts with versions, client documents, court copies, templates and the search that finds a sale deed without opening an almirah.
- 3
Money
Time and appearance records, unbilled work, fee notes, expenses, receipts and outstanding by client.
- 4
Clients and reporting
Client updates, the client portal, tasks, partner reporting and the integrations worth doing.
How a build actually runs.
- 01
Understand
We sit with the clerk and one partner, and follow a single matter from the cause list to the fee note.
- 02
Map
Courts, stages, document types, approvals, fee arrangements and who is allowed to see which matter.
- 03
Design
The diary and the matter file are drawn around your own practice, not around a foreign firm’s billing model.
- 04
Build
The hearing diary is built first. In almost every chamber that is the screen people open before anything else.
- 05
Test
The clerk runs the diary in parallel with paper for a few weeks, and the two are compared date by date.
- 06
Deploy
Go-live starts with one practice area, and the older matters are brought in as they come up for hearing.
- 07
Improve
Time records, the client portal and reporting follow once the diary is dependable.
Systems we can put together for you.
- Legal practice management software
- Matter management systems
- Hearing and cause list diaries
- Legal document management systems
- Drafting and version control systems
- Time and billing systems
- Fee note and receivables systems
- Client portals
- Advocate mobile applications
- Conflict check systems
- Recovery and panel management systems
- Contract and compliance calendars
- Management reporting
- Multi-office law firm platforms
Questions owners ask before starting.
What is custom legal practice management software?
Most foreign products are built for hourly billing. Indian practices bill by appearance or by matter, so the courts, stages, document types and fee arrangements come first here.
Can more than one person see the hearing diary?
Yes. The diary belongs to the firm, so if the clerk is on leave or at court, the office can still say what is listed tomorrow.
Can next dates be picked up from court websites?
Sometimes. It depends on what each court publishes and permits, and it varies by forum. We check court by court, and where it cannot be read the clerk enters it.
Can clients see their matter status?
Yes, through a client portal with matter stage, next date, released documents and fee notes. What is released to the client is decided by the firm, matter by matter.
Can it find unbilled work?
Yes. Appearances, drafting and conferences recorded against a matter can be listed as unbilled, which is usually the first thing a partner looks at.
Can it track limitation dates?
It can hold the date and remind you before it. It does not compute limitation, because that depends on facts and law that belong to the advocate, not to software.
Is client information kept confidential?
Access is set matter by matter, and downloads, edits and views are recorded. The firm decides who may see what, and the system enforces that decision.
Do you already have a product for this?
Yes. Our Law Firm Case Management Software covers matters, courts, stages, the hearing calendar and fee notes. If your practice fits it closely, adapting that costs less than building from scratch.
Can it handle bank panel and recovery work?
Yes. Portfolios, bulk notices, per-account filing status and the reporting format the bank asks for can be handled as their own workflow.
Can corporate advisory work be tracked too?
Yes. Opinions, contract reviews, due diligence and filing calendars are recorded as matters even though no court is involved.
Can we start with only the diary and documents?
Yes, and most chambers should. Dates and files first, then billing, then the client portal once the firm trusts what is in the system.
Can this be built as a product sold to other firms?
Yes, if it is planned that way from the beginning. Another chamber numbers its matters differently and bills on different terms, so both have to be settings rather than assumptions.
How we work with this trade.
Software we already run for this work.
If one of these fits, it is cheaper and faster than building from scratch. We will say so.
Build a practice system where the diary belongs to the firm.
A law firm loses money quietly. An appearance nobody noted, a draft rewritten because the latest version was in somebody’s inbox, a client who stopped calling because he stopped being told.
Tell us how your matters, dates and fee notes actually move today. If our Law Firm Case Management Software already handles it, that is what we will recommend. The clerk keeps the parts only he can do.
Tell us how your legal firms runs today.
We will tell you what can be digitised, what can be connected, what is worth automating, and what you should leave alone.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
- Your details stay private