Custom software · Legal firms

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.

Those dates live in a clerk’s diary, and the diary goes to court with the clerk. When a matter is adjourned at a quarter past eleven, the client may hear it from the other side by evening.

A practice system built by GullySystem puts the matter at the centre. It carries court, stage, next date, the draft as it stands, the appearance nobody billed, and the client waiting to be told.

Share your requirements

Who this is for

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

What can be built

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
Court reference 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
Higher 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

Nobody owns the diary alone any longer. 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 tax ID
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 a filing cabinet, the latest draft in a junior’s email and client photographs in a chat are brought to one place.

Document type and matter
Version history
Draft, reviewed and final
Who last edited
Client-supplied documents
Certified copies from the registry
Letter of authority to act
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 when nothing links the work to a fee note, and over a year that adds up.

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
Sales tax or VAT treatment
Withholding tax 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

Clients often ask what happened in court this morning, and the office needs the answer at hand.

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

The screen for 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
Email
Calendar applications
Cloud document storage
Accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero
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.

The journey

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

Built in phases

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.
2
Documents
Drafts with versions, client documents, court copies, templates and the search that finds a sale deed without opening a filing cabinet.
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 we work

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
Screens for 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 dates are compared one by one.
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.

What you bring

What you bring, and when.

The build moves at the speed of the answers. These are the things we ask for, in the order we ask.

01
Matter lists, diary pages and fee notes
Share the matter register, a hearing diary page and a fee note. Add a typical engagement letter. These are the papers we study before drawing screens.
02
A partner and an office manager
Partners decide how matters are handled. The office manager keeps the diary. When practice groups differ, the managing partner rules.
03
Conflict rules and fee arrangements
Conflict search rules, fee models and access to confidential matters need settling during the build. A partner reviews each module with live matters. Open rulings hold up later screens.
04
Active matters and confidentiality
Live matters travel with their key dates. The managing partner approves who sees what before anyone logs in.

What we can build

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

Common questions

Questions owners ask before starting.

What is custom legal practice management software?

It is practice software built around your own courts, stages, document types and fee arrangements. Most off-the-shelf products assume hourly billing, while many practices bill by appearance or by matter.

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. The firm decides, matter by matter, what is released to the client.

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 is usually simpler than building from scratch.

How is bank panel and recovery work handled?

Portfolios, bulk notices, per-account filing status and the reporting format the bank asks for are 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.

Should we begin with only the diary and documents?

Yes. Dates and files first, then billing, then the client portal once the firm trusts what is in the system.

Is a product version for other firms possible?

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.

Your trade

How we work with this trade.

Law firms

Ready products

Ready products for this work.

If one of these fits, it is cheaper and faster than building from scratch. We will say so.

Law Firm Case Management Software

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 nobody told him anything.

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 a person can do.

Tell us how you work

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.

What happens after you share your requirements

A senior engineer reads your answers. Nobody phones first.
Within one business day you get a written note: what we understood, what we would start with, and the questions we still have.
If it fits, a proposal follows with the order of work, what we need from you and what you receive at each step.
No call is booked and nothing is paid until you have read the note. Your details stay with us.

Start with your requirements

Seven short steps that tell us what you need. A senior engineer reads them before anyone gets in touch.