Naz Keceli
CEO and Co-Founder
Former litigation lawyer, nearly two decades in practice. Runs the scoping session and brings the legal and regulatory perspective.
A case management system built around your law firm. Not the other way round.
Most firms run on software built for the average firm. Your fee earners bend to it, work around it, and pay for it by the seat. We build the system your firm actually needs, at a fixed price, in three to four months. You see a working prototype within three working days of your half-day review, before you pay anything. You own it.
In progress: a firm on a slow hosted system saw its own workflow on screen within three working days of its first session with us. Scoping started the following week.
Every package is built for the average firm.
Case management software is designed to suit thousands of firms at once. That means it suits none of them exactly. So your firm bends to the software. Steps that do not fit the workflow get done by hand. Matters get tracked in email. A spreadsheet appears next to the system, then another one.
The problem is not the features you never use. It is the ones you need that are not there, and the workarounds they force. Those workarounds cost fee earner time every day, and they cost something less visible too. When people dislike a system they stop keeping it up to date, and the reports the partners rely on quietly stop being true.
When you ask for a change, your request joins a queue. The roadmap belongs to the vendor, and it is set by their other customers. A 30-person firm has very little say in it, and anything bespoke is usually priced as a separate project.
Slow, clunky, and useless on a phone.
Everyone in the firm knows the symptoms. Screens that take seconds to draw. Ten clicks to do a two-click job. Copy and paste that breaks. Printing and scanning that never quite works. Sessions that drop in the middle of a task. And a system that simply does not exist on a phone, so a fee earner at court or on the train is back to email and memory.
Underneath the clunkiness is a locked door. Your matter data sits inside the system, and the only ways in are the connections the vendor chose to build, on the vendor's terms and often at the vendor's price. If the tool your firm needs next is not on their list, including AI, you wait, or you go without.
A system built for your firm.
Every problem above has the same cause: the software was not built for you. So we build it for you.
Fit.
We start from your workflow, not from an average of a thousand other firms. The steps that used to be done by hand are in the system. The spreadsheets go. Matters are tracked where the work happens, so the data is complete and the reports the partners rely on are true again.
Change.
When the firm changes, the system changes with it. With our support, small changes take days and a new workflow takes weeks, not a vendor release cycle. There is no queue and no roadmap you are not on.
Anywhere.
It runs in a browser on any device. Fast, simple, and the same system at court, on the train or at a desk.
Connected.
It connects to what you already use: your accounts system, your email, your document storage, your e-signature tool, and the portals, registries and search providers your practice areas depend on. Time and disbursements flow to accounts without being typed twice. Invoices are raised from the matter, so they cannot be forgotten. Client details go in once. And when you want to add a new tool, including AI, you add it on your terms.
Yours.
The price is fixed before we start, and it is priced to your firm, not to your headcount. Hire ten more fee earners and the software bill does not move. At the end you own it: the code, the data, and every decision about what happens next.
In progress
What a half-day review produces.
A firm had spent years on a hosted case management system that was slow, clunky and unusable outside the office. Within three working days of a single half-day session with the partners and fee earners, we had a working prototype of a system built around the way the firm actually runs its matters. The partners saw their own workflow on screen, running in a browser, for the first time. Scoping the full build started the following week.
We will publish the full story, with the numbers, when the firm is live.
Firms of 15 to 80 fee earners that have outgrown the package.
Managing partners, COOs and operations leads in firms where the workflow no longer fits the software, the system is slow and clunky, and the licence bill grows with every hire. Process-heavy practices, where every matter follows steps the package was never built for, see the fastest return. If that sounds like your firm, read on. If you have fewer than 15 fee earners, the honest answer below is written for you.
What licensing costs, what building costs, and the cost nobody invoices.
Licensing
£60 to £175per user per month
Per-user pricing for UK legal case and practice management software runs from around £60 to more than £175 per user per month, depending on modules and integrations (Access Group, 2024).
A 30-user firm at £100 per user per month pays £36,000 a year, or £180,000 over five years. That is the sticker price. UK advisers put implementation, data migration and training at a further £1,500 to £15,000 on top, and that is before add-on modules. Annual and multi-year contracts lock you in, auto-renewals need notice, and getting your own data out at the end costs money and weeks of staff time.
At the end of five years you own nothing, and the fee has grown with every person you hired.
The cost nobody invoices
about £162,000a year, for 30 fee earners
The licence fee is the small number. The large one is fee earner time.
If 30 fee earners each lose 3 percent of 1,200 chargeable hours a year to workarounds, double entry and hunting for documents, that is 36 hours each, or the time of nearly one full-time fee earner. At £150 an hour it is about £162,000 a year. Even the vendors accept the point: Clio's UK research claims half of UK lawyers lose more than 44 days a year to inefficient legal technology.
A system that fits the way your firm works gives some of that time back. That is the economic case, and it is why fit matters more than the licence.
Building
£30,000 to £70,000fixed price
Most of our builds land between £30,000 and £70,000, depending on scope. That is a fixed price agreed before we start. There is no monthly retainer, so there are no surprises in your budget.
After handover you choose how it is run:
- Run it yourselves: hosting, backups and the essentials come to around £3,000 a year. This suits firms with their own technical support, because changes and fixes are then yours to make.
- Have us run it: usually £10,000 to £15,000 a year, less for smaller systems, for hosting, security patching, fixes, small changes, and someone who knows your firm when something goes wrong.
Where AI is built in, the AI provider's usage is billed to your firm at cost. It depends entirely on how much the firm uses it, and we size it with you during scoping.
Over five years, a 30-user firm
Five-year cost
Licensed software
£180,000 in fees, before implementation, add-ons and exit costs
You own nothing
Built for you, supported by us
About £120,000: around £60,000 to build, plus about £12,000 a year to run
You own the system
Built for you, run by you
About £75,000: around £60,000 to build, plus about £3,000 a year
You own the system
The gap widens every year, because licence fees grow with headcount and a built system mostly does not. This comparison assumes no new hires and no price rises. The calculator below adds both.
What your current system really costs
The true cost of staying where you are, so you can compare it with any proposal, including ours. There's no Khiliad price inside it.
How is your firm paid?
Staying where you are costs about £232,000 in licences over five years, and the time of about 0.9 fee earners every year.
Room for about 72 more matters a year with the same team, worth about £144,000 in fees.
Sometimes the right answer is to buy.
We build these systems for a living, so you should expect us to argue for a build. We would rather tell you now when it is the wrong answer than halfway through scoping. Some firms should not build.
If you have fewer than about 15 fee earners, a good cloud package will usually cost you less over five years than a build, and the gap is not worth the change. Around 20 to 25 fee earners the numbers turn, depending on how the system is supported. Above 30 they turn hard.
If your workflow is standard for your practice area and your current system handles it, a build fixes a problem you do not have. Fix the training and the setup first.
Client money is the one part we do not rebuild, and we will tell you why. More SRA interventions come from Accounts Rules breaches than from anything else. A proven legal ledger with a clean three-way reconciliation and an audit trail your COFA and your reporting accountant already trust is worth more than a bespoke one, however good. So we connect to it, and we put the effort where it changes your day: the matters, the workflow, the documents and the reporting.
Sometimes the right answer is to configure a platform you already pay for. It is faster than a build and cheaper up front, though you stay on someone else's pricing and roadmap. When it fits, we say so.
And if your system is fine but the admin around it is not, we can build what is missing around it instead. See how automation works
And sometimes it's to keep what you have. When we assessed a litigation firm across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, technology wasn't the problem, and the roadmap starts by getting more from the systems it already owns. Read the case study
From your current system to your own. One fixed price, typically three to four months.
Business and technology review.
FreeHalf a day with your partners and the people who run the matters. We look at how the firm works and where the current system gets in the way. Within three working days you have a written note with a likely price range, and a working prototype built from what we heard. You see your own workflow on screen, running in a browser, before you have paid anything. If building does not make sense for your firm, we say so at this point, and that is the end of it.
Scoping.
£3,000 to £4,000We take the prototype back to your fee earners, your accounts team and your partners and refine it with them. We map how matters really move, what stays and what goes, and every connection the system needs. By the end you have seen how the finished system will look and work, and you have a written scope and a fixed price for building it. The scope is yours, whoever builds it.
Build.
Fixed priceYou see working software every fortnight and you change your mind while it is being built. The system takes the shape of your firm.
Pilot.
Inside the buildOnce the core of your day-to-day work runs on it, a team takes real matters through the new system alongside the old one. The last round of changes comes from them.
Migration.
Inside the fixed priceMigration is the real project, and it is inside the fixed price, not a separate quote that arrives later. Data and documents come out of the old system, checked and reconciled, and cut over one practice area at a time, with the old system kept read-only until your licence ends. Training is built around your matters and your people, not a generic course, and we stay through the first weeks of live use, because that is when adoption is won or lost. Then handover.
After that, run it yourselves for around £3,000 a year, or have us support it, usually for £10,000 to £15,000 a year.
Other people can write code. We know what a law firm is.
There are software houses that will build a law firm a system. Here is what is different about working with us.
A lawyer and a technologist, on every engagement.
Most custom software houses have a legal page next to their pages for estate agents, clinics and wholesalers. We work only with law firms and in-house legal teams. Your scoping session is run by a former litigation lawyer and a thirty-year technologist, so nobody has to explain to us what a COFA does, why Lexcel matters, or what the SRA expects of supervision.
The price is on the page.
Most builders make you book a call to find out what it costs. Our range, our scoping fee and our running costs are above, before you have spoken to anyone.
You see it before you pay for it.
Most builders show you a proposal. We show you a prototype, within three working days of your half-day review, free. It is refined with your fee earners during scoping, so the fixed price you sign is for something you have already seen working.
Three to four months, not most of a year.
Builders who are new to legal work quote twelve to sixteen weeks for a first version and six to ten months for the whole thing. We build the part your fee earners live in and connect the rest, which is why the whole journey typically takes three to four months.
AI is the point, not an afterthought.
Most builders mention AI in a line. We build it into the workflow, on your terms, with governance your partners can explain to a client or a regulator. That is the reason to own the system now rather than in five years.
Security and continuity, answered in writing.
An independent penetration test on every build, hosting in your own cloud account in your region, and a plain answer to the question every managing partner asks: what happens if you disappear. Most builders leave both to the sales call.
You work with the two founders.
Most technology companies approach legal as an opportunity. We approach it as a profession one of us came from, and an industry the other has spent thirty years building technology for.
Jimmy Skowronski
CTO and Co-Founder
Thirty years in enterprise technology, McKinsey and IBM among them. Leads the build and tells you what is realistic before you commit.
Built to a standard your insurer will recognise.
Bespoke does not mean home-made. Every system we build follows secure development practice from the first line of code, and a full penetration test by an independent third party is part of every build, not an optional extra. You get the report. We only recommend hosting with reputable cloud providers that hold the recognised security certifications. Backups, access controls and audit trails are designed in, because your professional indemnity insurer, your Lexcel or CQS assessor and your larger clients will all ask about them.
Hosted in your region.
In the UK for UK firms, and in the EU for Irish and European firms. It sits in a cloud account your firm owns, or on your own servers.
Never used to train AI.
We only use AI providers whose terms rule that out, with regional processing wherever the provider offers it. We tell you in writing which provider, where it processes data, and on what terms.
Covered by contract.
A data processing agreement with us and with every provider we bring in, and a data protection impact assessment where the work needs one.
Oversight you can show.
Checking and sign-off steps are built into the work, so you can show a client, an insurer or your regulator who checked what. Governance is mapped to ISO 42001, the international standard for managing AI.
Tested and insured.
Every system we build is independently penetration tested before it goes live, and we carry professional indemnity insurance.
Nothing depends on us.
You own the code and the data from day one, and it's all documented, so any competent developer can take it over.
The question everyone asks
What happens if you disappear?
It is the right question, and here is the answer.
The code and the data are yours from day one. The system is built on a mainstream, widely used technology stack, not on anything exotic. It is documented, it is tested, and it runs in your own cloud account. Any competent developer can pick it up and keep it going. Nothing about it depends on us.
Compare that with the alternative. With a vendor, you are locked in and you own nothing. With us, you own everything and you are not locked to us at all.
AI, built in on your terms. Not bolted on by your vendor.
On a package, you wait.
AI is arriving in legal practice whether firms are ready or not. On a package, what you get is whatever your vendor decides to add, when they decide to add it, at whatever price they set, using whichever model they chose.
The question underneath.
Firms are rightly asking what their software providers do with client data, including whether it is used to train or improve the provider's own AI. The only honest answer is in the contract terms, and they are worth reading closely.
With your own system, you decide.
You choose the AI provider and the terms, so client data is never used for training, and processing stays in the UK or the EU where the provider offers it. You decide what the AI is allowed to see and do, and we set the governance up with you so it can be explained to a client, a regulator or a court.
AI in the work, not beside it.
Because the system is built around your matters, AI sits inside the workflow, drafting, summarising, checking and routing, rather than in a chat box off to the side. The result is a firm that can do far more with AI than any vendor's add-on will offer.
See your own system working within three working days.
A free business and technology review is half a day with your partners and the people who run the matters. Within three working days you have a working prototype built from it, on screen, in a browser, before you have spent anything. If building does not make sense for your firm, we will tell you that too.
Or email info@khiliad-legal.co.uk, or .
Not sure the system is the problem? Start with an Assessment.
Fixed price, no obligation, plain English, always.
Asked and answered.
How much does case management software cost for a UK law firm?
Between roughly £60 and £175 per user per month, depending on modules and integrations. A 30-user firm typically pays £36,000 or more a year, with implementation, data migration and training adding £1,500 to £15,000 on top.
How much does it cost to build a bespoke case management system?
Most of our builds cost between £30,000 and £70,000 as a fixed price, depending on scope, plus around £3,000 a year to run yourselves or usually £10,000 to £15,000 a year with our support. The half-day review is free and produces a working prototype within three working days. Scoping costs £3,000 to £4,000 and refines it into a working model of the final system. The firm owns the result.
Can a law firm build its own case management system?
Yes, and for firms above about 20 to 25 fee earners it usually costs less over five years than licensing. The build covers matters, workflows, documents and reporting, connected to your existing accounts system so nothing is entered twice.
How long does it take?
Typically three to four months from scoping to full migration, with a working prototype within three working days of the free half-day review and fee earners seeing working software every fortnight after that.
What happens to our existing matters and documents?
They are migrated one practice area at a time, with the old system kept read-only until your licence ends, so nothing is lost and nobody switches everything on a single weekend.
Is a bespoke system secure?
It follows secure development practice, is independently penetration tested before go-live, runs with a reputable certified cloud provider in your own account, and stores data in your region: the UK for UK firms, and the EU for Irish and European firms.
Will our client data be used to train AI?
Not with a system you own. You choose the AI provider and the contract terms, and client data is never used for training. With packaged software, check your vendor's terms, because that is the only place the answer lives.
What if Khiliad stops trading?
You own the code and the data, the system runs in your own cloud account on a mainstream technology stack, and it is documented so any competent developer can maintain it.
Why is my case management system so slow, and why does it not work on my phone?
Usually because it is desktop software running on a remote server, reached through a remote desktop login. That is why it lags, drops out and has no mobile version. A system built to run in a browser does not have the problem.