Sarah
Legal Assistant
“I want to capture everything we need without making the caller wait. No tab-hopping. No 'let me call you back'.”
The File Opening Design Explorer
Open a file. Properly.
Every firm opens files. Most stitch it together from three systems, six sticky notes, and the partner's inbox. Here's how we designed it instead — one guided journey from a phone ringing at reception to a live matter in the PMS. Ten scenes. Four people. One elegant product.
Scroll — the story starts below
Meet the people
Four people, one process.
Every scene in this journey belongs to someone real. These are the four personas we designed for — each with a different job, a different pressure, and a different moment of value.
David
Responsible Partner
“Show me the conflict, show me the risk. Give me one screen to decide on, and don't make me log into three systems to find it.”
Rachel
Compliance Officer
“Every step we take to onboard a client has to leave a complete record. If legal ever asks, I can point to exactly what happened, when, and who decided.”
James
The Client
“I've been in a car accident. I'd like some advice. Please don't ask me for my address three times.”
The journey — ten scenes
From a ringing phone to a live matter.
Follow Sarah, David, Rachel and James through a real file opening. Each scene pairs what the user sees with what the system does — and an expandable technical view showing how the product matures across three build passes: Skeleton, Manual, and Automation.
01
Sarah · intake
The phone rings at 9:04am. A car accident. A new client.
#The enquiry arrives.
James calls reception. He was in a car accident last week and he'd like some advice. Sarah needs to open a file without leaving the conversation — no tab-hopping, no tell-me-that-again, no let-me-call-you-back.
She captures the essentials while they talk: name, phone, a rough matter type, a note on urgency. The form feels like a conversation guide rather than a data-entry chore. By the time James hangs up, the enquiry exists.
When the same enquiry arrives at 8:47pm on a Sunday from the firm's website, the system does the legwork so Sarah sees a ready-to-triage enquiry on Monday morning — no one lost the caller.
02
Sarah · triage
Practice area? Conflict? Two questions that unlock everything else.
#Triage — classify, check, decide.
The enquiry is in Triage. Sarah needs to figure out two things before anything else can happen: what practice area is this really, and is there a conflict with another firm or an existing client?
If both come back clean, the enquiry moves on. If a conflict appears, a partner reviews. The decision — clear, review, or conflict — is recorded against the search itself, not buried in an email thread.
03
Sarah · instructions
Turn the enquiry into actual work.
#Add instructions. One per matter type.
Triage is done. Now the enquiry becomes one or more instructions — a Personal Injury instruction, say, and separately a Workers Compensation one if the same caller is pursuing both. Each instruction is the real thread that will become a matter in the PMS.
The enquiry itself completes, but it stays as the audit record of how the file got started.
04
Sarah · client setup
Is this a new person, or someone we already know?
#Identify the client.
Sarah uses the Client Picker on the instruction's onboarding portal. She searches ODS and the PMS by name, email, or phone. If James already exists, she links the existing record. If not, she creates a new Person with the ODS-backed form.
Four flows cover every real case: promote a contact to a client, create a new entity, link an existing client, or import from the PMS.
05
David + Rachel · partner approval
The partner decides. Who you act for is not a form field.
#Partner approval on the client.
The Client is in Pending-Approval. In parallel, an authoritative conflict search fans out across every connected entity — directors, UBOs, related parties — and aggregates the result. David sees a single Client Context Panel that tells him everything he needs.
He approves with no compliance required, approves but requires compliance, or rejects. The partner's click is the decision; the task holds the audit forever.
06
Sarah · matter shaping
Capture the matter details while they're fresh.
#Instruction onboarding.
Client approved. Sarah shapes the instruction itself: matter type, billing defaults, responsible lawyer, responsible partner. Nothing here is surprising — but the system quietly checks the prerequisites in the background.
If something's missing, a task appears. If everything's there, the button to proceed becomes live.
07
Rachel · AML
The client is real. We verify.
#Client compliance — AML, risk, sign-off.
Rachel works through the client compliance cycle: identity verification (powered by <strong>FirstAML</strong>), risk scoring (jurisdiction, industry, PEP), then partner sign-off on the risk score. When it's done, the Client's <code>complianceStatus</code> flips to Passed with a twelve-month expiry.
A year later, the cycle repeats. Every run is a self-contained record — you can stand behind any one of them in a regulator's audit.
08
Rachel · matter risk
The client is approved. Now the matter itself.
#Matter compliance — classify, rate, approve.
Client compliance answers ‘can we act for this person?’. Matter compliance answers ‘can we act on this matter?’. Practice area, activity type, the MRR — Matter Risk Rating. Partner signs off, and the compliance child completes.
The moment the platform fires <em>process-complete</em>, a re-evaluator plan upstream on the instruction hears it and re-checks whether the four conversion gates now all pass.
09
The system · gate
Four conditions. All must pass.
#Converting — the four-gate check.
Before a matter is ever created, four things must be true: the client is approved, client compliance is complete, matter compliance is complete, and the partner has approved. If all four, the system proceeds. If not, it waits quietly and re-checks every time an upstream process finishes.
Nobody has to poll. Nobody has to remember. The re-evaluator subscribes and listens.
10
Sarah + David · ship
The call hung up twelve minutes ago. The matter is live.
#Matter live in the PMS.
All four gates pass. The matter materialises in Sharedo. The Client record links. The case team copies across. Billing defaults land where they should. The PMS — Aderant, 3E, or Affinity — gets the matter and the client, and Sarah sends the engagement letter before lunch.
If the PMS push fails, a support-team task appears with the retry option one click away. The manual path never goes away — that's the whole point of resilient build.
Before · after
Same firm. Same matter. Different day.
Four pain points every file opening team will recognise — and what happens to them once the journey you just walked is in place.
Before
Caller calls twice. Sarah types their details into the enquiry form, the conflicts search, the PMS client record, and finally the matter opening form. Four re-types, three opportunities for a typo.
After
One ODS-backed form. One Person record upserted and linked everywhere. Zero re-types. The enquiry is the audit trail of how the file got started.
Before
AML verification runs as a separate spreadsheet. Expires quietly twelve months later. Nobody notices until a regulator asks.
After
Compliance is a process — AML (powered by FirstAML), risk, partner sign-off. A scheduled renewal scan spawns the next cycle before expiry. Every cycle is a self-contained record.
Before
Partner approval is an email thread. Who approved what, and when? Hunt through inboxes. Hope it was captured.
After
Partner approval is a task. The Client Context Panel renders conflict results, directors, UBOs, prior matters — all in one screen. The click is the decision; the audit is automatic.
Before
Matter opening is a separate data-entry task in the PMS — done by hand, often days after the caller has moved on.
After
When the four gates pass, the matter materialises automatically in Sharedo and synchronises to Aderant, 3E, or Affinity. The manual retry button never goes away — because sometimes the PMS doesn't.
The difference
What changes for a firm that adopts it.
Minutesnot hours
From intake to live matter.
Automation removes the mechanical handoffs. Every minute saved is a minute the caller isn't re-explaining.
1audit trail
Per process. Not per email thread.
Every compliance cycle, every conflict search, every approval — a self-contained record you can stand behind in a regulator's audit.
4integrations
Aderant · 3E · Affinity · FirstAML.
PMS provisioning and AML verification ship as part of the product. No bespoke connector project.
0dead ends
The manual path never closes.
Every automated step has a manual override. Resilient Build means a person can drive the whole journey when they need to.
See it in your firm
This is the story.
The product is built.
Alterspective's File Opening product runs on Sharedo and is being deployed with law firms now. Firms using it cut file opening from hours to minutes and replace the three-systems- and-an-inbox workflow with one guided journey. If that's the kind of change you're looking for, we should talk.