Departments, permissions and firm-wide reports.

A mid-sized law firm needs practice management software that separates practice groups without splitting the firm's data, enforces who can see which matters, and reports on the whole firm as well as each group. It also needs one intake process that every group uses, so conflicts and client onboarding happen the same way everywhere.

LawAOS handles this with departments, which are child workspaces under the firm. Each department has its own matters, members and settings, while firm-wide reports read across all of them. Roles set per-module permissions checked on the server, and attribute-based allow and deny policies narrow access further, for example by office or practice group.

Ethical walls are enforced in the database on matters, documents, file bytes, invoices, calendar, docket, tasks and conflict search. A wall is applied by an authorized administrator, and a walled user's conflict search shows only that a conflict exists, with its severity and department.

Several practice groups

A litigation group and a corporate group often keep different stages, templates and billing habits. Departments let each keep its own while sharing contacts and the conflict register.

People who should not see everything

Associates, paralegals, finance staff and HR need different access. Per-module role permissions and attribute policies decide it on the server, so hiding a menu item is not the only control.

Management reporting

Partners want realization, collection rate, utilisation against target and aged receivables by group and for the firm. The Firm-wide report tab reads across departments.

Intake at volume

More enquiries arrive through more channels. One pipeline with conflict checks on every enquiry keeps a busy intake team consistent.

Intake in LawAOS starts with public forms at a shareable link, with fields for contact details, dates, dropdowns and file uploads, protected by a honeypot and rate limits. Leads move through the Pipeline stages Prospect, Initial Meeting, Proposal Sent, Negotiation, Won and Lost, with referrals and activities tracked on their own tabs.

An optional guided accept runs the conflict check, the AML screen, an engagement letter from a firm template, e-signature and an optional trust retainer before the matter opens. It is off by default, so a firm switches it on when its process is ready.

• Map your practice groups to departments and decide which settings each group owns.
• Write down which roles see finance, payroll and HR, and test them as a low-privilege user.
• Set monthly utilisation targets per fee earner, or the utilisation report has nothing to measure against.
• Decide who will ask for ethical walls to be applied, and how that request is recorded.