Industry solution

Law Firms and Legal Teams

Run matters, conflicts, holds and billable time as one connected practice

Burdenoff products designed to work together for law firms and legal teams, from the first conflict check to the final invoice.

Products
8
Challenges
6
Concepts
15
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Law firm workroom with case binders and a laptop showing a litigation matter plan
ProServiceWorld(opens ProServiceWorld in a new tab)SemanticFed(opens SemanticFed in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)TimeCampus(opens TimeCampus in a new tab)Botlit(opens Botlit in a new tab)BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)PlanMagnet(opens PlanMagnet in a new tab)CrewFoundry(opens CrewFoundry in a new tab)

The problem

Why running a legal practice is harder than it looks

Legal work runs through conflict checks, holds, time entries, pre-bills, precedents and budgets that live in separate systems and spreadsheets, so risk goes unnoticed and billable value leaks between them.

Law firms and legal departments sell judgment, but they run on process. Every new matter needs a conflict check, many need a litigation hold, every hour needs a narrative and a code, and every invoice has to satisfy the client's billing guidelines. Most firms stitch these steps across a practice management system, a document system, a billing tool, email and spreadsheets, and the gaps between them are where risk and revenue slip away.

The pressure comes from both sides. Clients, especially corporate legal departments and insurers, expect budgets, staffing approvals and itemized bills, and they reject what does not comply. Inside the firm, laterals and mergers bring records that were never migrated, ethical walls have to hold across every copy of a document, and associates are asked to account for every tenth of an hour while carrying heavy caseloads.

In-house teams face the mirror image: they issue holds across the business, manage matters and outside counsel spend, and need precedent and know-how they can find quickly. Both need tools that respect privilege and confidentiality by design, keep a defensible record of who did what, and let lawyers spend their time on the law.

Who this is for

  • Managing partner or firm COO

    Realization, risk exposure and a firm that runs on one governed record instead of departmental spreadsheets.

  • Director of legal operations

    Intake, conflicts, holds, billing and staffing working as one process, with clear hand-offs and an audit trail.

  • Conflicts and new business intake team

    Searching every source, including legacy and lateral records, before the engagement letter goes out.

  • Litigation support and eDiscovery manager

    Issuing holds, tracking acknowledgments and departures, and releasing holds with a defensible record.

  • Billing and finance director

    Clean pre-bills that meet client guidelines, fewer rejections and early warning when realization starts to slip.

  • General counsel or legal department lead

    Matter visibility, holds across the business, budget discipline from outside counsel and quick access to know-how.

A day in the life

The story behind the solution

A week in legal operations at Ashbury Kline

Nadia Okonkwo runs legal operations for a regional firm with litigation, corporate and employment practices. Her job is to keep the machinery under the lawyers working: intake, conflicts, holds, time, billing, know-how and staffing. This is one week in late September, when a lateral partner arrives, a client's lawsuit takes on a new claim and month-end billing is due.

  1. Monday · Intake

    A clear conflict check that was not clear

    At 8:40 a.m. the litigation chair asks Nadia to rush a new matter for Tidewater Components, sued for breach of warranty by Harlow Marine Supply. The conflicts analyst searches the current system and clears it by lunch. Rafael Duarte, the lateral partner starting Wednesday, has sent his prior clients as a spreadsheet, and the database from the firm's 2019 merger is searched only on request. On Thursday someone notices Rafael represented Harlow Marine's parent company last year, and Nadia's morning starts with calls to two partners and the firm's general counsel.

    How this is solved: Conflicts hiding in legacy systems and lateral lists

  2. Tuesday · Legal hold

    Thirty-four custodians and a spreadsheet

    A supplemental hold notice went to 34 Brightwell custodians a week ago, after the distributor amended its complaint to add a trade-secrets claim reaching the sales team. At 10:15 a.m. Nadia opens the tracking spreadsheet: four custodians have not acknowledged, and a sales manager has asked three times whether texts on his personal phone count. From a passing remark on a call with Brightwell's HR manager, she learns that an account manager leaves on Friday, and that her mailbox is due to be wiped under routine retention.

    How this is solved: Legal holds tracked in a spreadsheet

  3. Wednesday · Time

    Tuesday's hours, rebuilt at 9 p.m.

    Tomás Reyes, a third-year associate on the Brightwell matter, spends Wednesday evening rebuilding Tuesday from his calendar and sent folder. The interrogatory responses and the client call come back easily; the morning in the review platform, two short calls with opposing counsel and an email thread with the expert do not. He records 6.2 hours, one of them a 3.0-hour block entry, and closes the laptop at 9:40 p.m.

    How this is solved: Billable time rebuilt from memory late at night

  4. Thursday · Billing

    A rejected invoice and forty pre-bills

    At 11:00 a.m. Grace Liu, the billing coordinator for the insurance defense group, forwards Nadia a rejection from a carrier client's e-billing portal: block billing, a paralegal task at an associate's rate, an unapproved timekeeper and a run of 0.1 internal conferences. Forty pre-bills are waiting for partner mark-up. The group's realization has slipped two quarters running, and nobody can say which guidelines are costing it.

    How this is solved: Invoices rejected under client billing guidelines

  5. Thursday · Know-how

    The clause from behind the wall

    At 3:00 p.m. Aisha Mensah, a fourth-year corporate associate, needs the firm's best limitation-of-liability carve-out for data incidents by end of day. The document system searches by file name, so she emails the practice group and gets three versions from three partners. One was copied months ago from a matter behind an ethical wall that excludes her team, and the know-how folder never carried the wall with it. Nadia only finds out because Aisha asks which version is current.

    How this is solved: Precedents nobody can find, and one nobody should see

  6. Friday · Budgets

    The client asks about the budget

    At 4:30 p.m. Brightwell's general counsel emails the litigation partner asking where the dispute stands against the budget the firm gave her in the spring. Pulling hours from the billing system into the budget spreadsheet, the partner finds discovery has used most of its hours with four depositions still to take. The work has landed on Tomás and one other associate, while a fifth-year with deposition experience has had a light month.

    How this is solved: Matter budgets that overrun before anyone looks

None of these problems belongs to a single system. Conflicts need every source, holds need a cadence and a record, time needs capture and approval, bills need rules, precedents need walls, and budgets need hours and capacity side by side. This solution concept connects ProServiceWorld's matter record with the products that search, remind, capture, plan and explain, so Nadia's next week runs on one record instead of a stack of spreadsheets.

Challenges and how they are solved

6 problems, several products, one connected answer

Each challenge shows the problem as it happens, how the products are designed to hand work to each other, and the concepts that illustrate it. Share any challenge on its own.

Challenge 1 of 6

Conflicts hiding in legacy systems and lateral lists

ProServiceWorld(opens ProServiceWorld in a new tab)SemanticFed(opens SemanticFed in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)

The problem

Monday, 11:40 a.m. The Tidewater intake form names Harlow Marine Supply as the adverse party but not its parent, Harlow Marine Holdings, and the analyst's search of the current practice system returns nothing. Rafael Duarte's disclosure list of 142 former clients and adverse parties is a spreadsheet attached to an email, waiting for a lateral clearance nobody has scheduled. Matter records from the 2019 merger sit in a legacy database that two people know how to query. The engagement letter goes out Tuesday. On Thursday, with Tidewater's answer due in three weeks, someone reading the lateral's list finds Harlow Marine Holdings on it, as a client he represented last year.

What it costs

A conflict found late can force a withdrawal, strain two client relationships at once and invite a disqualification motion. Even when it can be resolved, it means rework, apology calls and waivers chased after the fact.

How the products work together

Two searches stay separate but reach the same sources. First, when a lateral's disclosure list arrives, SemanticFed is designed to search it against current and legacy matter records where they already live, through one party model that carries aliases and parent-subsidiary links, and to label each hit by its match basis. Second, at intake, ProServiceWorld's conflict check is designed to send every party, alias and related company on the new matter to SemanticFed as one federated search across all three sources. In both runs the hits go to the ProServiceWorld conflict check, whose triage ranks them for the analyst. FluidGrids can then route high-ranked findings to the conflicts partner, prepare the waiver request and, on clearance, ask ProServiceWorld to open the matter with its ethical-wall access restrictions already set.

The outcome it is designed for

Every conflicts source is searched before the engagement letter goes out, and the clearance decision, any waiver and the wall restrictions stay on the matter record for the next reviewer.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 3 of 6

Billable time rebuilt from memory late at night

TimeCampus(opens TimeCampus in a new tab)ProServiceWorld(opens ProServiceWorld in a new tab)

The problem

Wednesday, 9:10 p.m. The firm asks lawyers to enter time daily, but the Brightwell discovery schedule leaves no gap in the day to do it. When Tomás rebuilds Tuesday, his sent folder shows the emails to the expert but not the forty minutes he spent reading her draft report, and the review platform keeps no log he can export. The two calls with opposing counsel appear nowhere at all. What he can reconstruct goes in as 6.2 hours, including a 3.0-hour entry reading 'Review documents; emails; call', exactly the kind of block entry Brightwell's outside counsel guidelines tell the billing partner to cut.

What it costs

Hours that are never recorded are never billed, block-billed entries invite client write-downs, and late-night reconstruction adds to the fatigue that pushes associates out of the firm.

How the products work together

TimeCampus assembles each lawyer's day from calendar, document, email and call metadata, without screenshots or keystroke logging, and is designed to turn it into draft entries in tenths of an hour. Each suggestion is designed to carry a client-matter number from ProServiceWorld, UTBMS task and activity codes and a narrative written one task at a time, and nothing is recorded until the lawyer accepts, edits or splits it. Accepted entries are designed to flow into ProServiceWorld as draft time against the matter, where the lawyer submits them and the supervising partner approves them, ready for the pre-bill.

The outcome it is designed for

Associates confirm their time the same day instead of reconstructing it at night, and entries reach partner approval already coded and itemized.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 4 of 6

Invoices rejected under client billing guidelines

ProServiceWorld(opens ProServiceWorld in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)

The problem

Thursday, 11:00 a.m. The carrier's portal rejects the LEDES invoice line by line: seven of 112 lines come back with reason codes, and two cite section 4.2 of its guidelines, which pays nothing for conferences between the firm's own lawyers. Each carrier client of the insurance defense group has its own guidelines, kept as PDFs on a shared drive and usually read only after a rejection. Grace resubmits, which restarts the carrier's review period, and the partner marking up the next forty pre-bills is working from memory of which rules apply to whom. The write-down the group eventually takes is one no partner actually decided on.

What it costs

Each rejection means rework, delayed cash and a write-down no partner agreed to, and the pattern stays invisible until quarter-end numbers arrive.

How the products work together

FluidGrids holds each client's outside counsel guidelines as a versioned rule set covering approved timekeepers, rate caps, block-billing and minimum-increment rules and non-billable task types, and tests it against sample entries before it goes live. ProServiceWorld is designed to run draft bill lines through those rules during pre-bill review, so the billing partner sees each flagged line, the rule behind it and a suggested fix before the LEDES invoice is submitted to the client's e-billing portal. Write-downs and rejection reasons can be collected by a FluidGrids workflow and pushed through a datasink into BigConsole, where a realization console with filters and drill-down shows which guidelines, clients and practice groups are driving the slide, and a planned Explain panel is designed to summarize what changed with citations to the data.

The outcome it is designed for

Guideline problems are caught at pre-bill instead of by the client, and partners can see which rules and clients are eroding realization while there is still time to act.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 5 of 6

Precedents nobody can find, and one nobody should see

Botlit(opens Botlit in a new tab)SemanticFed(opens SemanticFed in a new tab)ProServiceWorld(opens ProServiceWorld in a new tab)

The problem

Thursday, 3:00 p.m. The document system finds files by name and author, not by what a clause does, so Aisha's search for a data-breach cap turns up engagement letters and nothing she can use. The practice group's clause bank is a folder of word-processing files nobody has curated in two years. Of the three versions partners send back, one was pasted into that folder from a matter behind an ethical wall that excludes her team. The copy kept the text and lost its matter number, so nothing marked it as screened, and nobody can easily say who else has opened it.

What it costs

Lawyers spend unbilled hours hunting for work the firm has already done, and a clause copied out of a screened matter can undermine a wall the firm has promised to maintain.

How the products work together

A Botlit precedent assistant is designed to answer drafting questions from the firm's clause bank and precedent sets, quoting the clauses it used with practice area, date and precedent reference, and saying plainly when nothing matches. Clause-bank entries are designed to keep their source matter from ProServiceWorld's document classification, and entries with no source matter wait for knowledge-manager review before they become searchable. Precedent metadata is registered as a SemanticFed source that Botlit queries through SemanticFed's governed agent interface, so before retrieval the assistant checks the asker against ProServiceWorld's matter-level access restrictions and the row policies SemanticFed is designed to enforce on matter data. Walled passages are withheld with a notice that names no matter.

The outcome it is designed for

Associates find approved precedent language without emailing the practice group, every answer shows where it came from, and text from a screened matter stays screened wherever it has traveled.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 6 of 6

Matter budgets that overrun before anyone looks

PlanMagnet(opens PlanMagnet in a new tab)CrewFoundry(opens CrewFoundry in a new tab)ProServiceWorld(opens ProServiceWorld in a new tab)TimeCampus(opens TimeCampus in a new tab)

The problem

Friday, 4:30 p.m. Brightwell's outside counsel guidelines ask for written notice before any phase runs past its budget, and no notice has gone out. The budget was set by phase in the spring, in a spreadsheet; the hours sit in the billing system, and the staffing plan lives in the partner's head. Laid side by side for the first time, they show discovery at 84 percent of its hours with four distributor depositions still to take, expert disclosures due October 9, and the same two associates carrying almost all of the remaining work.

What it costs

Overruns that surface at invoice time damage client trust and usually end in write-offs, and uneven staffing burns out the associates the firm most wants to keep.

How the products work together

ProServiceWorld holds the budget the firm gave the client, broken down by litigation phase, and TimeCampus tracks the hours recorded against each phase estimate. Both are designed to flow into PlanMagnet, which lays the matter out by phase with court deadlines as milestones and adds the estimates on the tasks still open to the hours already logged. Through its CrewFoundry integration, PlanMagnet weighs the plan against who actually has room in the coming weeks, and CrewFoundry's utilization heatmap is designed to let the practice manager move deposition preparation toward a lawyer with capacity and the right experience. A daily sweep in PlanMagnet flags a phase heading over budget with its stated reason, so the partner can send the client a revised budget before the invoice does it for her.

The outcome it is designed for

Partners see a phase heading over budget weeks earlier, rebalance work before associates burn out, and give clients revised budgets before an invoice surprises them.

The concepts behind it

PlanMagnet

Litigation Phase Plan and Staffing Forecast

The matter plan by litigation phase: each phase budget from ProServiceWorld, hours logged in TimeCampus, court deadlines and daily flags for overruns and overloaded people.

Works with CrewFoundry, ProServiceWorld, TimeCampus

Concept pagefor Litigation Phase Plan and Staffing Forecast on the PlanMagnet website (opens in a new tab)

How it fits together

From intake to invoice: how the products hand off on one matter

Follow one litigation matter from the day it arrives to the day a partner asks how it is tracking. Each step shows one product doing one job and how it is designed to pass something concrete to the next.

  1. To SemanticFed: Designed to send the full party list as one federated conflicts search.

  2. To ProServiceWorld: Designed to attach the hits to the conflict check, where triage ranks them and a person clears or waives.

  3. To ProServiceWorld: Designed to send accepted entries as draft time for submission and approval.

  4. To PlanMagnet: Designed to share each phase budget and the approval status of its hours with the phase plan.

  5. To FluidGrids: Designed to hand phase forecasts to a FluidGrids workflow alongside the firm's billing data.

  6. To BigConsole: Realization and phase data, delivered through a datasink.

  7. To Botlit: Console figures made available to a partner-facing agent.

Step 1 of 8: Take in the matter

Products in this solution

What each product brings

  • ProServiceWorld

    Matter, conflicts, holds, time and billing record

    Built for professional-services firms and designed to bring matters, privileged documents, conflict checks, legal hold, time approval and pre-bill review onto one workspace record the other products here are designed to hand work to, including matter-level access restrictions for ethical walls.

    Visit ProServiceWorldAll concepts

  • SemanticFed

    Federated conflicts search and access policy

    Designed to query current, legacy and lateral records where they already live, behind one party model and row-level policies, without making another copy of sensitive client data.

    Visit SemanticFedAll concepts

  • FluidGrids

    Clearance routing, hold cadences and billing rules

    Schedules, webhooks and versioned decision rules turn intake routing, hold reminders and client billing guidelines into repeatable, auditable workflows, and its datasinks feed BigConsole.

    Visit FluidGridsAll concepts

  • TimeCampus

    Privacy-first capture of billable time

    Assembles the day from work tools without screenshots or keystroke logging, is designed to propose matter-coded entries that lawyers accept before anything is recorded, and tracks hours against project estimates.

    Visit TimeCampusAll concepts

  • Botlit

    Governed agents for precedents and custodians

    Designed to ground answers in the firm's own knowledge bases with cited passages, say so when nothing matches, and run under the workspace's roles, policies and audit trail.

    Visit BotlitAll concepts

  • BigConsole

    Realization and write-down consoles

    Turns write-down and rejection data delivered through FluidGrids datasinks into live consoles with filters and drill-down, with a planned Explain panel designed to cite the data behind each finding.

    Visit BigConsoleAll concepts

  • PlanMagnet

    Litigation phase plans, court deadlines and at-risk sweeps

    Plans work in phases with milestones and daily at-risk sweeps, and weighs every plan against real capacity through its CrewFoundry integration, with phase budgets and hours designed to come from ProServiceWorld and TimeCampus.

    Visit PlanMagnetAll concepts

  • CrewFoundry

    Associate capacity, skills and utilization

    Designed to hold the skills, capacity and utilization picture that tells a practice manager who can take the next deposition and who is already stretched.

    Visit CrewFoundryAll concepts

One platform underneath: Burdenoff Workspaces

Every product here runs on Burdenoff Workspaces: one sign-on for lawyers and staff, role-based access designed to reach down to the matter, one audit trail across conflicts, holds, time and bills, and one bill for the firm across the products it uses.

Concept gallery

Every concept in this solution

15 concepts from 8 products. Each one links to its own page on the product's website, and every view has a link you can share.

Pitch kit

The Legal solution in one minute

Your firm's riskiest and most expensive moments happen between systems: a conflict hiding in a legacy database, a hold nobody followed up, hours never recorded, an invoice rejected under a client's guidelines. Burdenoff brings ProServiceWorld's matter record together with TimeCampus, SemanticFed, FluidGrids, Botlit, BigConsole, PlanMagnet and CrewFoundry, so each hand-off is designed to happen by default and leave a record.

  • Designed to run conflict searches across current, legacy and lateral records before the engagement letter goes out
  • Built toward legal holds with custodian acknowledgments, reminders and departure alerts on the matter record
  • Designed to suggest matter-coded time lawyers accept the same day, with no screenshots or keystroke logging
  • Designed to apply client billing guidelines at pre-bill, with write-downs traced by client and guideline
  • Built toward precedent answers that respect ethical walls, and phase budgets weighed against real capacity
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Questions

Frequently asked

Is this a finished product for law firms today?

No. This page describes a solution concept. The products involved are at different stages, from pre-launch to generally available, and the legal-specific capabilities described here, including the legal-hold tracker and matter-coded time suggestions, are designs we are building toward. We are glad to walk through what exists now and what is planned.

Does TimeCampus monitor lawyers' screens or keystrokes?

No. TimeCampus is designed around privacy: it works from activity metadata such as calendar events and document and email activity, never screenshots or keystroke logging. Suggestions stay private to the lawyer until they accept them, and team views are aggregate.

How are ethical walls respected when an AI agent searches precedents?

The precedent assistant is designed to check the asker against ProServiceWorld's matter-level access restrictions and the row policies SemanticFed is designed to enforce on matter data before it retrieves anything. Walled passages are withheld with a notice that does not name the matter, clause-bank entries without a source matter wait for review, and every answer is logged with the passages it used. The firm still sets and supervises its own screens.

Will this make our firm compliant with professional conduct rules or client billing guidelines?

No software can do that on its own, and nothing here is legal advice. The products are designed to help the firm apply its own policies, client guidelines and approvals consistently and to show afterwards what was done; lawyers and the firm's general counsel still make the decisions.

Can an in-house legal department use this, or only law firms?

Both. In-house teams can use the same matter, legal hold, precedent and budget capabilities to run holds across the business, manage matters and review outside counsel budgets, while law firms add conflicts, time capture and pre-bill review.

Do we have to replace our document management or billing systems?

Not necessarily. ProServiceWorld is designed to keep matter records and document metadata, SemanticFed is designed to query existing sources where they live, and FluidGrids connects to other systems through its connectors. Which systems to connect first is a conversation about your current setup.

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Where these products also work together

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This is a solution concept: it shows how Burdenoff products are designed to work together in this industry. The images are illustrations of the concepts, not screenshots of the actual products, and every name and figure in them is sample data.