We build one thing, and we show our working.
OpenLPM is legal practice management software for firms that would rather see the evidence than read the adjectives. The software is open source, the build record is public, and these pages say what the product does not yet do.
The practice, in one place — and one place only
Matters and procedure, deadlines, documents and signatures, time and billing, client money, intake, the client portal, research, compliance and firm operations: seventeen areas of work that most firms currently run across six disconnected tools.
Every firm runs on its own private deployment, and the client-facing side runs separately from the staff side. That is the product’s central decision rather than a deployment footnote — and it is why the source code is public.
Two observations, one product
Most firms run two systems of record
The practice software holds the matters; a spreadsheet holds the truth about deadlines, or fees, or who is doing what — because the software does not quite fit and the spreadsheet answers the faster question.
OpenLPM is built around the questions partners actually ask on a Monday: where is this matter, what is due, who owes us, and what did we promise.
Firms are asked to justify their data
Clients, insurers and regulators increasingly ask where a firm’s data sits and who else could reach it. A permission model is a harder answer to give than a structure — and far harder to demonstrate.
So we built the separation into the product and published the code, so the claim can be checked rather than believed. The whitepaper sets out the argument, including its limits.
Because the claim should be checkable
A firm is being asked to trust its client files to software it cannot inspect, from a vendor it has just met. That is the wrong shape for a professional obligation.
- Auditable. Code and a numbered build record are public, so isolation and money handling can be verified rather than asserted.
- Leavable. If we stop being the right choice, the software keeps running. We sell the managed service, not permission to use it.
- Contributable. Procedure templates, trust rules and translations are jurisdiction-specific; no single team gets them right everywhere.
- Quotable. Our papers carry a CC BY licence — including the parts that argue against buying from us.
Six habits you can hold us to
Evidence before claims
Anything asserted on this site should be demonstrable in the live product or readable in the source. Where it is not, we say it is in progress.
Demos before decks
Thirty minutes on a live instance, spent on the two problems that cost your firm the most time — not a feature tour in slide form.
No cold outreach
We do not buy lists or sequence strangers. The mailing lists are double opt-in and one-click to leave.
We publish our limits
Unfinished work is listed as unfinished — on the security page, in the papers, and in the demo if you ask.
Security is never an upsell
Patches, security fixes and the audit trail are in the product on every plan, including the free one.
No hostage architecture
Complete export, no exit fee for your own data, and in bring-your-own-account deployments the data is already yours.
Clear about the wrong fit
- Not a giant suite. If a long tail of peripheral modules matters most today, an established platform will serve you better for now.
- Not finished. The per-firm slice is live; per-firm cloud accounts, console-triggered deploys and usage dashboards are in progress and labelled.
- Not for every firm. A two-person practice with short, simple matters may be better served by a well-run spreadsheet — we say so in the comparison.
- Not a magic wand. Software enforces structure; it does not fix a firm that has not decided how it works. That work happens in the blueprints.
We would rather list this than have you find it during diligence. Ask about any line in a demo and you will get the same answer.
Two hours is enough to decide
Name the two things that cost your firm the most time. Put real work through the demo. Then run one of the tests we publish — on us.
Separation, in ten points
Where does your data sit, what happens when another firm has an incident, and can you see a real export?
Read the whitepaper →Test 02The trust ledger test
Three transactions and one deliberate overdraw, with your own bank statement. Half a day.
Read the whitepaper →Test 03Cost the operations
Price the hours nobody invoices before deciding who runs your deployment.
Read the whitepaper →