For boutique litigation firms

Bring your clients into the matter.

A calm reading room where the client follows the matter at their own pace — and a structured way to surface what only they know. Anxiety goes down. Signal goes up.

Talk to us → See how it works ↘
What it is

A reading room that lives on the client's desktop.

Matterfile is a native desktop app the firm sets up for the client to live in — with the corpus, the chronology, the wargames, and the reading room all running on their machine. The firm sees the work product; the client inhabits the matter.

Every line in the timeline cites a source. Every contribution from the client is logged. The chronology never goes stale — the folder keeps growing, and Matterfile keeps reading.

See the five stages →

Fig.   A wargame variant of Adler v. Brent, mid-read; v12 still running in the background.
What it does

Three jobs, in one quiet desktop window.

01 · CHRONOLOGY
A sourced timeline, kept current.
Matterfile classifies what's in the matter folder — emails, filings, contracts, transcripts, notes — and extracts a chronology of facts. Each one carries a verbatim quote and a path back to its source. Partners spot-check; the model defers.
02 · READING ROOM
A calm place for the client.
The chronology becomes a reading room: typeset, keyboard-driven, no chrome. The client follows the case at their own pace, flags what's off, and contributes the parts only they remember. The signal becomes part of your record.
03 · WARGAMES
Run the case forward.
Sandboxed AI sessions inhabit opposing counsel, the other party, or your own consulting expert — reading your outgoing documents, writing the analysis that party would write. The reading room is where you read the runs.
And ongoing

A moving thing.

The matter folder is watched after the first afternoon. New emails, new filings, new voice notes, new transcripts — each gets classified and folded into the chronology as it lands. The corpus grows. The wargames stay current. The reading room is always up to date.

Two sides of the same screen

Less anxiety for the client. More signal for the firm.

For the firm

  • 01Signal you can't get elsewhere. Clients know things their lawyers don't — names, timing, motives, the half-remembered email from 2023. Matterfile surfaces what they remember, on your record, before counsel needs it.
  • 02Fewer status emails. Sophisticated clients refresh inboxes. Matterfile gives them a quiet place to see where the matter stands — instead of waiting on the partner's calendar.
  • 03Sourced chronologies in an afternoon — not a quarter of billable associate hours. Wargames stress-test outgoing work before it goes out.
  • 04A taste-forward product to point at: this is how we work. Wins prospects. Helps you hire.

For the client

  • 01A calm place to follow the matter at their own pace — instead of a Slack of dread between status calls.
  • 02Real agency. Contribute the parts only they remember. Flag what's off in the chronology. Add what's missing.
  • 03The timeline they can show their spouse, board, or therapist — with sources behind every line.
  • 04The unknowns of litigation, mapped — not hidden behind the partner's calendar.
“Less anxiety. More signal. The client is finally part of the matter.”
The Matterfile thesis · 2027
Principles

Quiet, restrained, lawyerly — on purpose.

PrincipleWhat it means for your matter
Sources, not summaries Every fact carries a verbatim quote and a path to the source. No fact appears without one. The chronology is a database, not a Word doc.
The partner is the bottleneck Matterfile defers. The model proposes; the partner confirms. Overrides are logged. Nothing irreversible happens automatically.
Color-vision accessible One ochre, throughout. No green-for-good, no red-for-bad. Color-blind partners and clients read the same signals as anyone else.
Your corpus stays put The matter folder never leaves the machine it sits on. Inference uses your firm's API key, with retention off. We never train on your matter.
One client. One matter. One file. One window, on one machine. Matterfile lives where the matter is being lived — beside the case — and disappears when you're not in it.

Read the full security & privilege brief or skim how the chronology is built.

Private beta

If you want to be part of this, get in touch.

We're working with a small handful of boutique litigation firms while the product takes shape. If you handle complex matters where the client is sophisticated and engaged — commercial, partnership disputes, IP, family business, employment — we'd like to hear from you.

Talk to us → Or email hello@matterfile.cc ↗