Last time, we walked through thirty years of law firm marketing: be found, be read, be trusted, be used. It ended at Client-Specific Software. This is the story of how we stumbled into it.
Start with the person on the other side of the table.
She’s in-house counsel at a global company. Something just happened that affects a dozen jurisdictions, and she needs to know who has to be notified, and by when. She emails outside counsel. Then she waits.
The memo she gets back is excellent. It is also the tenth version of a memo she’s received before, rebuilt from scratch by an associate, and billed accordingly.
Nobody’s doing anything wrong. The firm is applying real judgment. The client is getting real advice. The space between them is just expensive.
How we came to solve this particular problem
We’ve worked with law firms since 1999. For many years our main product for them was Law Firm CMS, a content management system we deliberately built as non-SaaS in a world racing the other way.
That wasn’t contrarianism. We’re a software development company. We build, we maintain, and we innovate alongside our clients, and we refuse to lock them into features that stop them from changing when the world does.
That flexibility turned out to matter more than we knew. When a firm came to us with a problem that no off-the-shelf product would ever solve, we didn’t have to say “that’s not on the roadmap.” We could just build it.
We know how the legal industry works, so we were ready to go from day one.
Building the solution to this problem
The request came from a global firm’s cybersecurity and data privacy team.
Their client, a Fortune Global 50 company, needed help analyzing data breach notification requirements across jurisdictions, faster and more consistently than memorandums could deliver.
For years we’d asked ourselves how to help our clients help themselves. This was different. This was helping two parties help each other.
That meant working with attorneys and product owners on both sides of the relationship – always a challenge working with the most demanding people on the planet who are working with facts that must always be 100% accurate.
The minutiae mattered. A lot.
Do they really need that field?
Yes. Both sides need that field.
Fine. Who owns the deadline logic?
The firm does. The client just needs to see it.
The platform turns the firm’s breach notification methodology into software. This was critical – the firm was already solving the problem effectively and the software needed to model the means of that success.
The client’s team enters the facts, the tool compares the jurisdictions side by side, and it brings deadlines and notification requirements to the surface. The firm’s attorneys review and advise in the same place.
It was used on day one and is still in use today.
What we really built
Yes, we built a bridge. But what we really built was a way for the firm to express its true value.
The core value of a lawyer is to identify the facts, interpret them, assess the risk, and apply judgment and practical guidance to the client’s world.
Client-Specific Software can do that in a way that is common, repeatable, and reliable that enhances and supports the work performed by your firm:
| What the lawyer does | What this software does |
|---|---|
| Identify the facts | The client enters incident facts once, in the structure the firm’s method requires |
| Interpret them | The firm’s jurisdictional logic is applied the same way every time |
| Assess the risk | Notification requirements and deadlines appear side by side |
| Apply judgment | Attorneys review, refine, and advise in the same workspace |
In addition, it acts as a dynamic and advanced text book for lawyers to learn. Instead of having to describe the facts of an incident, they can just learn the areas of law by having them right at their fingertips.
The software doesn’t replace the lawyer. It embeds the legal work while removing the assembly work, so the lawyer’s judgment arrives sooner and most efficiently.
Simply put, we made the firm’s expertise part of the product.
Is your firm sitting on one?
The case study above illustrates software for breach law, but there are many more problems waiting to be solved.
Most firms already have a Client-Specific Software idea hiding in their client communications. Look for these signs:
- The same question keeps coming back. It might be a different incident, a different deal, or a different state, but the analysis is the same.
- The client is managing your work in spreadsheets. If clients are tracking your advice in their own tools, they’re asking for a shared one.
- The answer spans jurisdictions. Side-by-side comparisons are where memorandums struggle and software shines.
- The relationship matters more than the matter. This is a client you want to keep for the next ten years, not the next ten invoices.
If that sounds familiar, let’s talk. We’ll help you find the bridge worth building and then build it with you and your client.