Harrington Chambers Matter

The challenge

Before

Harrington Chambers is a 41-fee-earner commercial firm in the City of London. They had grown past the point where a shared Dropbox plus a master Google Sheet could carry the practice — matter documents lived in inconsistent folder structures, conflict checks were a partner walking down the corridor asking aloud, and time recording happened in two systems that never reconciled. Fee earners admitted to writing off 12-18% of recordable time simply because the timer was inconvenient and recreating the day from memory was unreliable.

• Matter documents stored across inconsistent Dropbox folder structures
• Conflict checks performed by partners asking the room out loud
• Time recorded in two systems that reconciled monthly with manual cleanup
• Fee earners writing off 12-18% of recordable time to convenience
• Bills assembled in Word with manual narrative cleanup before sending
• Client portal nonexistent — documents emailed as zip files
• AML and KYC packs stored in a separate compliance folder, often stale
• No way to see at a glance which matters were burning past budget

The solution

What we built

We built a matter management platform calibrated to how a UK commercial firm actually works. Every matter has a structured workspace with conflict, AML, engagement letter, billing instructions, and key dates as first-class fields. Conflict search runs the moment a new matter is opened and surfaces party-name and counterparty matches across active and closed files with confidence scoring. Time recording lives everywhere — a desktop pop-up, an Outlook ribbon button, a mobile app, and a quick-entry web form — and every entry is structured with phase, task, and narrative. Bill drafting pulls time and disbursement entries into a structured pre-bill, where the supervising partner can write off, transfer, or re-narrate in bulk before approval. The client portal exposes only the documents and bills the client should see, with permissions per recipient. Compliance dashboards show AML refresh status, engagement letter age, and matter budget burn for every active file in one view.

How the system flows

1. New Matter→Conflict Search→AML Check→Engagement Letter→Workspace Created
2. Time Capture (5 entry points)→Phase + Task + Narrative→Daily Total
3. Disbursement Entry→Receipt Attached→Approver Routing→Bill-ready Status
4. Pre-bill Draft→Partner Review→Write-off / Transfer→Final Bill Issued
5. Document Upload→Auto-classified→Privilege Marked→Client Portal Sync
6. Budget Set→Burn Tracked→Threshold Alert→Partner Review
7. AML Refresh Schedule→Document Request→Client Upload→Compliance Sign-off
8. Matter Closure→Final Bill→Archive Workflow→Retention Schedule

• Conflict search with party-name and counterparty match confidence scoring
• Client portal exposing only permitted documents and bills per recipient