Practa

The problem

A small law firm’s day runs across matters, deadlines, documents, client messages, billing, and money held in trust. When those live in separate systems, staff re-enter the same information, deadlines depend on someone’s calendar, and trust balances are reconciled by hand.

Why existing tools fell short

Small firms often combine a case-management tool, a document store, e-signature and mail services, and separate accounting software for trust funds — re-entering the same matter details in each and reconciling across them by hand.

The solution

Practa covers the client lifecycle from intake to invoice: a client CRM and intake pipeline, matter tracking with statute-of-limitations alerts, a document center with an in-browser editor, templates, version history and e-signatures, time and expense tracking, invoicing, and an IOLTA trust ledger with per-client ledgers and three-way reconciliation.

Clients get a branded portal with two-factor sign-in for documents and messages. Conflict checks run across all clients and matters before a new engagement is accepted, and documents can be emailed or sent as physical USPS mail from inside the app.

• Matter lifecycle tracking with statute-of-limitations alerts, calendar, and tasks
• Document center: in-browser editor, templates, version history, and e-signing
• Time, expenses, invoices, and an IOLTA trust ledger with three-way reconciliation
• Branded client portal with TOTP two-factor sign-in and secure messaging
• AI drafting, summaries, and vision OCR using the firm’s own API keys

Engineering involved

Drawn from the product’s own public documentation and trust pages. Only components the product publicly documents are listed.

Tenant isolation & roles

Multi-tenant data isolation between firms, six user roles, and an immutable audit log of activity.

Authentication & security

TOTP and SMS two-factor authentication, GeoIP and IP allow-list restrictions, rate limiting and account lockout, compromised-password alerts (HIBP), and Microsoft 365 inbox-rule monitoring.

Financial logic

Matter-linked time tracking, expenses, invoices, and an IOLTA trust ledger with per-client ledgers, three-way reconciliation, and compliance reporting.

Documents

An in-browser Word-compatible editor, auto-filled templates, version history, e-signing with time-stamped signed PDFs, an embedded draw.io diagram editor, and export to DOCX, ODT, PDF, XLSX, and ODS through a LibreOffice conversion engine.

AI integration

Drafting, matter summaries, ticket responses, and vision OCR that turns scans and handwriting into editable documents or filled forms — using the firm’s own OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, or Mistral keys, billed by the provider directly.

Integrations

SMTP email and IMAP polling, Twilio SMS with MMS capture, USPS mail through Lob, and OneDrive sync; inbound email and SMS attachments are saved to the right client and matter.

What makes it interesting

Trust accounting is where legal software can’t be approximate. Practa keeps a per-client IOLTA ledger and reconciles it three ways — ledger, client balances, and bank — inside the same system that records the time, expenses, and invoices that move money, rather than exporting to separate accounting software.

AI is bring-your-own-key across five providers, so a firm chooses its model and pays the provider directly instead of through a markup.

Outcome

Not measured Practa is in early access, onboarding law firms by request. No usage, revenue, or performance figures have been published, so none are claimed here.

Current status

Early Access Working software in a public beta or early-access program — not yet generally available.

Practa is in early access: it is onboarding law firms by request and isn’t generally available. Pricing is provided on request. Practa states that it is not affiliated with any bar association.

See it working

The product site includes screenshots from the live application — dashboard, matters, documents, calendar, reports, and more: practa.app.