Every email that enters a law firm belongs to a matter: a court registry notification, opposing counsel's submissions, a client's document, an invoice. Putting it in the right place in the practice-management software is essential, and nobody wants to do it.
Reading the subject line is not enough. A serious filing system cross-references clues the way an experienced assistant would:
When the clues line up beyond a confidence threshold, the email and its documents are filed in the right matter and the right subfolder of the practice-management software, with a clean description. Below that threshold, the system does not guess: it presents the candidate matters and lets the firm decide.
Illustration: fictional data.
Automatic filing that gets it wrong wastes more time than it saves: a misfiled document is a lost document. The right criterion for judging a tool is therefore not "how many emails does it file?" but "how accurate is it when it files on its own, and what does it do when in doubt?". When in doubt, a good tool holds off on filing and asks you.
A professional spends about 28% of their week in their inbox and nearly a day per week searching for misplaced information (McKinsey Global Institute). In a firm, that time comes out of the only time that counts: billable time. Automating the filing gives those hours back to the matters.
It cross-references several clues: the court's references, the firm's internal reference (following your own conventions), the names of the parties, the context of the case and the content of the attachments. If everything lines up, it files. If a clue is missing, it asks you.
Yes. Scanned PDFs go through text recognition before analysis, which makes it possible to read docket numbers and references even on digitized documents.
It stays pending and is presented to you with the candidate matters. One click to decide, and the system learns from your decision.