Legal · App Starter
Legal Practice Template
Matters, time, deadlines, and billing in one generated system — owned by the firm, not licensed per attorney.
A firm's software should organize the way lawyers actually work: everything belongs to a matter, every tenth of an hour is money, and a missed deadline is a malpractice claim. Dual7 generates this system around your practice areas and hands the firm the codebase — client files in your database, no per-seat license.
- 6 core entities
- Deadline dashboard
- Code you own
- Vibe + Governed modes
01 · Data model
What's inside: the data model
In a law practice, the matter is the unit of everything — work, documents, time, and money all hang off it. Six entities model that structure, and each screen below is a view over these tables in your own database.
| table | what it holds |
|---|---|
clients | Individuals and organizations the firm represents, with contacts, conflict-check notes, and every matter under one record. |
matters | The engagements themselves — practice area, status, responsible attorney, key dates, and the spine everything else attaches to. |
tasks | Work items and deadlines on a matter, with owner, due date, and a flag for court-imposed dates that cannot slip. |
time_entries | Tenth-of-an-hour increments against matters, with narrative, biller, rate, and billed status — the firm's inventory. |
documents_meta | An index of the matter file — engagement letters, filings, correspondence — with versions and storage locations you control. |
invoices | Bills assembled from unbilled time and expenses per matter, tracking issue date, payments, and outstanding balance. |
02 · Screens
Signature modules
Matter timeline
01Every event on a matter — tasks completed, documents filed, time recorded, invoices sent — in one chronological view. When the client calls or a colleague covers, the state of the engagement is readable in a minute, not reconstructed from an inbox.
Time tracking into invoices
02Time entries accrue against matters in 0.1-hour increments with narratives, then flow into invoice drafts as line items at each biller's rate. Nothing unbilled hides: the work-in-progress view shows exactly what each matter has accrued since it was last billed.
Deadline dashboard
03All dates across all matters on one screen, court-imposed deadlines flagged and sorted by proximity, each tied to a responsible attorney. This is the screen that justifies the whole system — the one a calendar-and-memory practice doesn't have until it needed it yesterday.
03 · Process
How it works
- 1You
Describe the practice
Practice areas, how matters open and close, billing arrangements — hourly, flat, contingency — and who bills at what rate. The matter-centric structure is supplied; your description tunes it.
- 2Vibe mode
Refine it in Vibe mode
Adjust conversationally: add a statute-of-limitations field per practice area, a matter-opening checklist, a different narrative format for insurance-defense clients. Every refinement is a code change you can review.
- 3Governed mode
Deploy through the governed pipeline
Go live through approval gates onto infrastructure the firm controls, with client files and billing history in your own database — the custody posture privileged material deserves.
04 · Fit
Who the Legal Practice starter is for
Solo attorneys running the firm after hours
The solo's real second job is operations: tracking time, chasing bills, watching dates. This starter compresses that into one system where recording the work and billing the work are the same motion — and the deadline screen watches the calendar so it isn't watched at 2 a.m.
Small firms outgrowing the shared drive
Three attorneys, one drive of folders, and time kept six different ways — it works until a bill goes out wrong or a date lives only in someone's head. A matter-centric system gives the firm one place where the file, the time, and the dates agree.
Firms refusing per-attorney pricing
Practice-management subscriptions bill like associates — per seat, forever, with rate increases. A firm that generates its system owns it outright: the next hire costs a database row, and the software line item in the budget stops compounding.
Practices with workflows no vendor ships
Immigration runs on government form deadlines, plaintiff work on contingency economics, estate practices on decades-long client relationships. Generic legal software averages these into mush; a generated system starts from the shape of your docket.
05 · Yours
Customize it, own it
Make it yours
Tune it to your practice area first. Add the fields your matters actually turn on — jurisdiction, opposing counsel, statute dates, court and judge — and make matter templates per practice area so opening a new engagement scaffolds its standard tasks and deadlines automatically. Billing arrangements are your rules: hourly with rate tables, flat-fee stages, contingency with expense tracking.
Then extend where the firm feels friction: e-signature on engagement letters, a client portal for status and invoices, conflict-check searches across clients and adverse parties at intake. The generated app is a standard codebase with no runtime dependency on Dual7 — firm staff or outside developers can extend it under your own security review.
Why a starter, not a subscription
Law firms sit on the most sensitive files a business can hold, yet most rent the software that holds them and pay by the attorney for the privilege. Generating the system reverses the custody: client files, time records, and billing history live in the firm's own database, on infrastructure the firm selects, behind access rules the firm can read as code. Vendor lock-in is a real ethics consideration when the locked-in asset is the client file.
The economics compound quietly. Per-seat pricing taxes growth; owned code doesn't. And when the firm needs something specific — a retainer-balance warning before work exceeds trust funds, a report a malpractice carrier asks for — it's an edit through Dual7's governed pipeline, with the approval gates and audit trail a regulated profession expects, not a feature request in a vendor's queue.
Legal Practice template — frequently asked questions
What does the legal practice template include?
A matter-centric system generated into code the firm owns: clients, matters, tasks with deadline flags, tenth-of-an-hour time entries, a document index, and invoicing — plus the matter timeline, work-in-progress billing flow, and firm-wide deadline dashboard built over them.
Does it handle trust and retainer accounting?
The starter tracks operating-side billing out of the box. Trust accounting is jurisdiction-specific and unforgiving, so it's a deliberate extension: add retainer balances per client with replenishment thresholds, and reconcile against your trust account. Because the code is yours, the rules can match your bar's exactly.
Can it track time in 6-minute increments?
Yes — time entries are 0.1-hour increments with narratives and per-biller rates, and unbilled time accrues visibly per matter until it's pulled into an invoice draft. Firms that bill flat or contingency can use the same entries as cost data instead.
How does it help with deadlines and limitation dates?
Every task carries a due date and can be flagged as court-imposed; the deadline dashboard sorts all of them across the docket by proximity and responsible attorney. Practice-area date calculations — limitation periods, response clocks — can be encoded as rules in your codebase.
Where do client documents actually live?
The starter indexes the matter file — versions, types, locations — while the files themselves sit in storage you choose and control. That split keeps the system fast and keeps custody of privileged material exactly where the firm's obligations say it should be.
Can staff without legal software experience use it?
The system mirrors how the firm already talks — matters, time, deadlines, bills — rather than a vendor's abstractions. And anything that confuses your team is your code to rename or remove, which is not a sentence a subscription lets you say.
Related
Dual7 App Starters
Build your Legal Practice on your terms
Matters, time, deadlines, and billing in one generated system — owned by the firm, not licensed per attorney. Describe your version to start — the output is a project you own.