For law firms
An accounting firm? This wayPractice management
without the suite.
Pertavo holds the matter: its documents, its messages, the dates it turns on, the hours against it, and the signature at the end. It does not try to be your accounts package, your case-law library or your phone system.
From $29 a month, per firmCompare plans
A real screen, not a mock-up. Click to see it at full size.
01What it does
The matter, and
everything on it.
Each one checkable against the running product before you talk to anybody.
Matters, not folders
Every document, message, task, deadline and hour files onto one matter with your own reference on it. Open it and the file is there, whole.
How it worksA conflict check that interrupts
Opening a matter searches the firm and refuses to create it until somebody has read what it found and said so. Not a report you run afterwards.
How it worksEthical walls that fail closed
Switch them on and an attorney reaches only the matters they are staffed on. The request is refused at the database, not greyed out on the screen.
How it worksThe letter writes itself
Keep the engagement letter once with the matter’s details as merge fields. Generate it filed on the matter, then send it for signature without leaving the page.
How it worksSigned in the browser
Place the fields, send it, and your client signs by drawing, typing or uploading. The signature is written into the PDF, so the signed file opens anywhere.
How it worksThe bill comes off the file
Hours logged on the matter carry the rate they were charged at. Draft an invoice from them and from the expenses, set anything the client has already paid against it, and send it — Pertavo keeps the number, the status and whether the email actually reached them.
How it worksA portal a client will use
They set their own password from an invitation and get five menu items. Nothing to install, and no attachment ever leaves anybody’s inbox.
How it works
02What it does not
Four things worth
knowing before a demo.
What Pertavo leaves out is the reason you can believe the rest of it.
No trust accounting.
Pertavo holds a record of what a client has paid you against a matter, and what has been spent from it. That is a ledger of movements, not a trust account: no segregated client accounts, no three-way reconciliation, no bar reporting. The money sits in your bank; this says what moved.
No docketing.
Deadlines are dates somebody types. Nothing computes a limitation period from any court’s rules, and nothing sends a reminder.
No way for a client to pay you here.
An invoice goes out from Pertavo, but it is settled by bank transfer or however you already take money, and somebody at the firm records that it arrived. There is no card payment and no payment link on the invoice.
Nothing syncs but the diary.
Your deadlines and appointments go out as a calendar you subscribe to from Outlook, Google or Apple, and it arrives when that app feels like re-reading it. Nothing else connects: no email, no accounts package, no API to build against — and nothing reads back in.
Everything else this product does and does not do is written down in the documentation, before you talk to anybody.
03Four questions
The ones firms
ask first.
Answered here, so you do not have to spend half an hour on a call finding out.
- Is this a full case management system?
- No, and it is worth being plain about it. Pertavo does matters, documents, templates, e-signature, messaging, time and dates. It does not do accounts, billing, court forms, case law or diary integration. Firms that want one system for everything should buy one of the suites; firms that want the client-facing half done properly are who this is for.
- Does the conflict check replace our own procedure?
- No. It searches this firm’s own matters for the same client and for similar titles, once, when a matter is opened. It does not know other parties, files from before you started using it, or that two accounts are the same person. It catches the obvious case and makes somebody look — the judgement is still yours, and the tick box is where your firm records that it was made.
- How is this different from other law firm software?
- By being less of it. Most law firm software is a suite — matters, trust accounting, billing, docketing, court forms — sold per user, and most small firms use a third of it. Pertavo does the half a firm opens every day: the matter, its documents and messages, templates, conflict checks, ethical walls, time, dates and the signature. What it leaves out is listed above rather than buried, and the price is per firm, so adding an associate or a seasonal paralegal does not change it.
- Can our clients see each other’s matters?
- No. A client reaches the matters where they are the client and the documents shared with them, and their request is narrowed before it reaches the database — another client’s documents are not hidden from the screen, they are never fetched. The same is true between firms.
Tell us about
your firm.
We reply from a real address, within a working day, and we will tell you honestly whether Pertavo fits what you do.