How we built a family law solicitor a one-click desktop app for client matter folders

Every new client a solicitor takes on becomes a "matter", and every matter needs the same tidy set of folders: correspondence, court documents and bundles, financial disclosure, witness statements, client ID, billing. For a busy family law practice, creating that structure by hand for every new client is slow and easy to get inconsistent.

And for a solicitor, consistency isn’t just about being tidy. A well-organised, predictable file is an SRA compliance matter and a defensible record if a complaint or claim ever lands. The filing system is part of the professional duty.

So a sole-practitioner family law firm we work with asked us for something simple: a way to spin up a new, correctly-structured client matter folder without thinking about it.

Why not just push it to the cloud?

The reflex these days is to push everything into the browser, a Power Automate flow, a web form, another portal, another login. And for plenty of firms that’s the right call. But this solicitor didn’t want to live in the cloud. They wanted to work where they’re fastest and most comfortable: on the desktop. Not logging into a website to file a folder. Not living in a browser tab.

So that’s exactly what we built, for how they actually want to work. A small, native Mac app. One click on the desktop. No login, no browser, no friction.

The cloud is still doing its job, quietly

And here’s the part that makes it work: their files still live safely in Microsoft 365. The app creates the matter folder right there on the Mac, and it syncs straight up to SharePoint through OneDrive, so everything is backed up, in the cloud, and reachable from anywhere.

What it does

What it does is exactly what they asked for, and nothing they didn’t: the solicitor types the client’s name, picks the matter type from a list, and clicks one button. A numbered, correctly-structured matter folder appears instantly.

Built in: the right subfolders every single time, automatic matter numbering so two cases never collide, the firm’s own family-law matter types, and a gentle reminder to record the conflict-of-interest check before any work begins.

“No training. No passwords. Open it, type a name, click, done.”

The lesson

The lesson, and it’s one we hold onto even as an AI and platform company: the right technology is the one that fits the person using it. Cloud-first is a brilliant default, but "default" isn’t "always". A lot of professionals are faster, calmer and more productive in a proper desktop app, and good engineering means building for that, not talking them out of it.

The smallest, most natural solution that completely solves the problem is almost always the best one. For a busy solicitor, "one button on the desktop, no login, just works" is exactly right, and the cloud is still doing its job behind the scenes.

If your team works best on the desktop, you shouldn’t have to move into a browser to get modern tooling. That’s the kind of bespoke software (sized to the real problem and shaped around how you actually work) that we love to build.