Contract review automation for mid-sized firms. Built fast in 2024. Twelve firms paying within four months. Then the first firm’s COLP, the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice, sent the procurement assessment.
Industry Legaltech development · SRA-aware · COLP-aware · AML-aware · UK
Legaltech development, with matter custody your COLP. can defend at inspection.
Matter management, document custody, e-signature workflows and contract review — built with SRA-aware design, a conflicts engine at intake, AML triage and an audit log per file action. The architecture brief answers the question your COLP, your regulator, and your acquirer’s CTO all ask.
24hreply, from a senior
200+projects shipped since 2019
Senioronly, on the spine
(Why UK legaltech founders sign)
You build for the user. We build for the regulator, the acquirer, and the user, all at once.
SRA-compliant legaltech software isn’t a feature you bolt on at the first firm inspection. It’s a set of decisions you make in week one, or pay months to retrofit. We make them in week one.
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The founder this page is for12 firms paying · renewal withheld · 6 more signed
James founded a UK legaltech. The product worked. The custody couldn’t pass audit.
James’s team had shipped with no conflicts engine, no matter-scoped document custody, no AML evidence retention, and no audit log per file action. The firm withheld renewal pending evidence. The board call was not pleasant.
We rebuilt the spine over eleven weeks. Matter-based workspaces with conflicts check at intake. Document custody with an immutable audit log per file action. AML triage for high-risk matters. COLP approved on first audit. This page is for the legaltech founder who’d rather build with the regulator and the auditor in mind on day one.
THE UK LEGALTECH REGULATORY LANDSCAPE WE BUILD TO
Four things a generic SaaS build can’t hand your COLP
The cost of designing for legaltech-specific obligations in week one is a fortnight of architecture work. The cost of retrofitting them after the first regulator or buyer letter is months of senior engineering and an unhappy board.
SRA Code of Conduct alignment
Confidentiality, conflicts, client money handling, and AML obligations mapped to the platform’s data model and access controls. Designed in on day one.
Conflicts of interest engine
Matter intake checks new parties against the firm’s existing matter database. A conflict flag triggers manual review. Audit log on every check.
Document custody + immutable audit log
Every file action, view, edit, share, delete, logged with actor, IP, and timestamp. Documents immutable once finalised. Your SRA inspector reads it and signs.
AML for legal services
Risk-based assessment. KYC on clients in scope of POCA and MLR 2017. Sanctions screening. SAR-ready exports. The CDD lifecycle tracked end to end.
The legaltech pain. The architectural answer.
Every legaltech founder who emails us is fighting one of these eight things. Each one is brutal to fix once a firm depends on it. Each one is a single architectural decision made on day one of our build.
- 01
“The firm’s COLP wants document custody evidence. We have none.”
Immutable audit log + matter custody from day one. Every file action logged. Documents immutable once finalised. Matter-scoped access. Your COLP reads the audit and stops asking.
- 02
“A new matter was onboarded. Three weeks later we found it conflicted with an existing one.”
Real-time conflicts engine at intake. The conflicts check runs on matter intake against your existing matter and party database. A flag triggers manual review. Late-discovery conflicts get prevented architecturally.
- 03
“MLR 2017 applies. We don’t have a documented AML risk assessment.”
Risk-based AML triage + audit-logged decisions. A LangGraph agent runs the risk assessment. KYC on in-scope matters. Sanctions screening. CDD lifecycle tracked. SAR-ready exports.
- 04
“A client said another firm saw their document. We can’t reproduce or rule it out.”
Per-document audit log + role-scoped sharing. Every view, edit, share, and download logged. Per document, per actor, per IP. You can prove what happened, or prove it didn’t.
- 05
“The contract review AI cited a case that doesn’t exist. The client noticed.”
Citation-grounded RAG + clause-cite enforcement. RAG over your firm’s real precedent library. No citation, no answer. Hallucinations get prevented architecturally. The verification path is logged.
- 06
“A client says they didn’t sign. We have no audit chain.”
eIDAS-aligned signature + cryptographic audit chain. Cryptographic signature with audit chain. IP, timestamp, device fingerprint. eIDAS Advanced or Qualified where required. Signatures survive a court challenge.
- 07
“Our enterprise client wants Cyber Essentials Plus. We don’t have it.”
Cyber Essentials path + ISO 27001 readiness. The architecture brief is aligned with Cyber Essentials Plus. An ISO 27001 readiness checklist ships with it. Most of the gap is paperwork after our handover.
- 08
“A trial bundle takes a paralegal four days to assemble. We need it in four hours.”
OCR + auto-bundle + e-bundle output. PDF ingest with OCR. Auto-bundle assembly. E-bundle output for court. The four-day paralegal job drops to four hours.
LEGALTECH SURFACES WE’VE SHIPPED
Eight legaltech surfaces, live in production
What lives on the spine. Each one wired with matter-scoped access, audit logging, and the document custody your COLP expects to see. This is custom legal software development, not a generic SaaS with a legal coat of paint.
Matter management
Matter intake, conflicts check, document custody, billing-aware time recording, MTD-ready exports.
Contract review automation
Claude Opus reads contracts against the firm’s playbook. Risk flags, negotiation notes, citation per clause.
E-signature workflows
Cryptographic signature. eIDAS-aligned levels. Witness step. Audit chain on every signature event.
Conflicts checking
Real-time check on new matter intake. Existing matter and party database. Manual review queue for flags.
AML triage agents
A LangGraph agent for risk-based assessment. POCA-aware. KYC, sanctions, SAR-ready exports.
Discovery + bundle prep
PDF ingestion, OCR, search, bundle assembly, e-bundle output for trial.
Legal research copilots
RAG over your firm’s precedent and textbooks. Citation-grounded. Hallucination-resistant.
Client portals
Document sharing, status updates, billing visibility, e-signature pickup. Audit-logged per client.
Three tiers, one audit log that survives the firm inspection.
Our legaltech builds have stress-tested these picks. Tier 1 runs every build. Tier 2 is what we reach for when the brief calls for it. Tier 3 scales it to firm-grade volume with UK data residency.
T1
What every legaltech build runs on
MERN + PythonMongoDBPostgreSQLNode.js + ExpressReact + Next.jsTypeScriptPython (FastAPI)Claude OpusLangGraphOpenSearchOnfido / SumsubComplyAdvantageMixpanel
T2
When your legaltech brief calls for it
reach when neededeIDAS signature SDKTesseract OCRJava + SpringPinecone / WeaviateExperian / EquifaxVeriff
T3
The infrastructure that scales it
AWS (London) + cloud-nativeAWS (London)RDS / AuroraS3 Object LockAWS KMSSecrets ManagerKubernetes (EKS)Apache KafkaRedisCloudTrailTerraformDatadog + SentryVanta / Drata
Recent client · UK legaltech · 2024
Withheld renewal to
Withheld renewal to
COLP approved on first audit, six new firms signed
James’s contract review platform, in real numbers. We rebuilt the spine with matter-based workspaces, a conflicts engine at intake, immutable document custody with per-action audit log, AML triage for high-risk matters, and Claude Opus contract review against firm playbooks with clause-level citation. Eleven-week sprint.
The sprint
11wk
Conflicts + custody + AML shipped
1st
COLP audit passed first time
The outcome
6
New firms signed next quarter
0
Custody breaches in production
Track record
2
Legaltech platforms since 2019
100%
COLP audits passed
Three ways to start. Pricing in the email back.
We don’t publish prices on a page. Every legaltech scope carries different regulatory weight. Pick the shape that fits and Mohit will send your real number inside 24 hours.
Legaltech audit week
One week, fixed cost. A 30-page brief mapping your build against the SRA Code, conflicts duties, document custody, and AML obligations.
- 5-day senior audit
- Regulatory mapping
- Architecture brief + ADRs
- No commitment to build
Legaltech build sprint
8 to 14 weeks. A full legaltech surface end-to-end. Matter management, conflicts engine, AML onboarding, eIDAS signature chain, an SRA-defendable audit log.
- MERN + Python + AWS (London)
- SRA + COLP + AML designed in
- 30-day walk-away both ways
- IP assigns on every commit
Compliance rebuild
7 to 12 weeks. Your existing legaltech with the COLP procurement letter or supervisory request. We rebuild the gaps and ship the audit log.
- Gap audit + remediation
- Audit log retrofit
- Conflicts process rebuild
- COLP-readable brief shipped
“The audit pack was the document that closed our COLP file. They read it once and renewed.”
— James, founder, UK contract-review legaltechWhat legaltech founders actually ask before signing
Pain-first, soft-second. The questions every founder asks before they trust an engineering studio with privileged client data.
Both of our legaltech builds have passed COLP audits. The architecture brief is written to the questions the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice actually asks. Conflicts engine, matter custody, document immutability, AML triage, and an audit log per file action. SRA-compliant legaltech software is the whole point of legal software development done our way, not a feature we bolt on at the first inspection.
A real-time check on matter intake against your firm’s existing matter and party database. A flag triggers a manual review queue. An audit log on every check. The conflicts engine is designed in at the data model, not bolted on. That’s the line between custom legal software development and a generic SaaS with a legal label.
AWS S3 Object Lock for immutability once a document is finalised. A cryptographic hash of every document version. Every view, edit, share, and delete logged with actor, IP, and timestamp. Your SRA inspector reads the log and signs. Zero document-custody breaches across our legaltech platforms in production.
Not on our shop. RAG over your firm’s real precedent library. Citation-grounded outputs. No citation, no answer. Every clause flag cites the playbook paragraph. Hallucinations get prevented architecturally, so the case law your AI cites is the case law that exists.
eIDAS-aligned signature levels: Simple, Advanced, Qualified. A cryptographic audit chain. IP, timestamp, and device fingerprint logged. A witness step where required. The signatures are designed to survive contested validity claims, not just to look signed.
AWS in the London region by default for UK data residency. EU residency on AWS Frankfurt or Ireland where your firm needs it. UK GDPR plus a privilege-aware DPIA. A record of processing activities. A versioned sub-processor list. Right-to-erasure designed at the schema, not bolted on. Your DPO reads the brief and signs.
Three things make this hard to fake. The 30-day walk-away clause goes both ways and refunds the unused portion. Payments are milestoned 25/25/25/25, so you never pay more than 25% ahead of working software. And we’ve been shipping since 2019, UK VAT registered, listed on Companies House. You can check us before you sign.
Yes, with 14 days’ notice. Engineers move to other projects, your repo stays where it is, your spend pauses. Resume with 14 days’ notice and we pick up at the same sprint board, same engineers. No cancellation fee, no restart fee. We’ve done this six times in 2025.
In context
The surface you hand over.
legaltech development, in context — the dashboards, flows and components your team actually ships, reviews and maintains.
One paragraph. That’s it.
Tell us what you’re building, who your buyers are, and the regulatory or compliance question you’re most worried about. Mohit reads every first email and replies inside 24 hours: a clear yes, a clear no, or the one question that decides it.
What happens after the email lands
- < 24h
A personal reply.
Yes, no, or the deciding question. Straight to your inbox, not a team thread.
- Week 1
Audit week begins.
We map your build against the SRA Code, write the trade-offs, hand you a signed scope.
- Week 14
Audit-ready legaltech.
Matter custody, conflicts, AML, and the brief your COLP and acquirer both read cold.