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.
A serious filing system does not just read the email's subject line. It 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. When they do not, 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?". The right answer to doubt is silence: do not file, and ask.
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.