Project management for legal professionals
Coordinate your legal matters and assign tasks while keeping track of your deadlines.
No credit card required
A tool to coordinate your legal work
Keep a clear overview of your open matters, outstanding documents and upcoming deadlines. In legal practice, you need to coordinate multiple matters, keep track of correspondence and prevent missing documents from holding up the next steps. Otilus helps you assign tasks and follow each matter from initial intake through to final closure.
A contract is awaiting the client’s comments, a dispute requires supporting documents and a mediation calls for discussion points to be prepared. With documents arriving in stages, research still to complete and responses pending from the parties, outstanding items soon build up. A matter may appear ready to proceed while a crucial element is still missing, preventing further analysis or the steps initially agreed from going ahead.
In Otilus, each card represents a legal matter: an advisory matter, a commercial dispute or the preparation of a contract. The columns show its stages. You can distinguish matters awaiting analysis, those requiring action and those currently on hold. Card types distinguish your services, making it easy to find Advice or Disputes matters when preparing a review with the team members responsible for them.
Kanban: Visualise your legal matters and their progress, from intake to closure.
GTD: Bring together each matter’s tasks, notes and files to prepare your next steps.
Gantt: View the stages of your matters and their deadlines on a timeline.
Workflow: Automatically create tasks tailored to the matters your organisation handles.
Inside each card, you set out the actions required:
review documents, carry out research, draft legal advice or prepare documents for a hearing. Task assignments show who is responsible, while deadlines help organise work around key dates for the matter. Notes and files bring together the information received, comments and relevant documents. You have a shared framework to coordinate lawyers, legal advisers and assistants while taking account of the specific requirements of each matter your team handles.
An example board for tracking your legal matters
Here is a customisable setup example for professionals who support their clients with legal advice, drafting and dispute resolution. Each card represents a matter, with its tasks and deadlines. Five columns show its progress, while six card types distinguish the services provided. You can adapt this framework to your organisation, the areas of law you practise and the way work is shared among the people involved in each matter.
Stages that fit the way you work
The Matter intake, Preparation/Analysis, Action/Proceedings and Closure columns show the progress of your matters. The On hold column keeps paused matters visible while you await additional documents, client feedback or a response from the other party.
A few examples of project types: define your own!
- Advice: guidance to inform decisions and assess the risks involved in a situation.
- Disputes: handling disputes and protecting the parties’ interests.
- Contracts : drafting, reviewing and negotiating agreements between parties.
- Mediation: helping parties reach an amicable agreement.
- Court proceedings: assistance and representation in court proceedings.
- Legal instruments : drafting documents that formally establish rights and obligations.
Scenarios and workflow:
customise automation for your projects
1️⃣ The trigger
A debt recovery matter is opened in Matter intake, then reviewed in Preparation/Analysis. After examining the invoices and deciding on the next steps, the lawyer moves its card to Action/Proceedings to prepare the work with the client.
You can configure a scenario for the Disputes type when a card enters this column. The trigger therefore combines this matter type with entry into Action/Proceedings. Otilus creates the planned tasks according to your settings. You choose the actions to prepare and the team members involved, based on the needs of this debt recovery matter.
2️⃣ The actions (workflow)
Otilus automatically creates the tasks defined in the scenario:
- check the supporting documents
- update the breakdown of the amounts claimed
- draft the written submissions
- check deadlines and prepare documents for disclosure.
These tasks are assigned to the team members you choose:
the lawyer handles the submissions, the legal adviser prepares the breakdown and the assistant manages the documents. You adapt this workflow to the people involved, the priorities and the needs of the matter.
3️⃣ The result
The debt recovery matter moves forward with assigned tasks. Everyone involved can find the documents gathered, the comments and the actions they are responsible for.
The lawyer responsible can identify missing documents and the work remaining before the next steps in the matter.
Team members carry out the required actions and update their progress. When the matter is complete, the person responsible manually moves the card to Closure. If supporting documents are missing, they move the matter to On hold to flag the wait and keep the blockage visible during progress reviews.
An approach suited to different areas of legal practice
This setup can also support a law firm, an in-house legal department, a notarial practice or a judicial enforcement office. These organisations handle matters that require gathering documents, analysing situations, preparing legal documents and coordinating several people around deadlines. Card types can reflect the services specific to each organisation, while the stages can be adapted to the way its work progresses. The board provides a shared framework for organising actions and identifying outstanding items that continue to hold up progress.
Coordinate your matters, documents and legal work on a board tailored to your practice.
No credit card required