A small practice does not need another generic CRM. It needs every matter, every billable six-minute unit, every disbursement and every document in one place — with an audit trail that stands up to an SRA inspection and a client-account ledger that reconciles itself. Navigare Legal is that system, built for fee earners who would rather practise law than wrestle software.
Practice management for small firms is too often a folder structure, a spreadsheet of WIP, a separate AML check and a client account that only reconciles at month-end — if you're lucky. Each gap is unbilled time, compliance risk, or both.
The call you took walking to court, the email drafted at 9pm — if it isn't captured at the moment, it's written off. A firm that records time honestly bills 15–20% more on the same workload.
When a scope or fee dispute lands, "who changed what, when" matters. If your evidence is a thread of emails and a memory, you are negotiating from weakness.
The SRA Accounts Rules don't care that you were busy. A client-account ledger that lives in a separate bookkeeping package is a reconciliation waiting to go wrong.
ID checks, source-of-funds, ongoing monitoring, conflict checks before a matter opens — scattered across tools, they're a finding waiting to happen at your next review.
Fixed-fee and retainer work without live burn-down means you discover you're underwater on a matter only when you bill it — by which point the margin is gone.
Client confidentiality and legal privilege sit awkwardly with consumer cloud tools and offshore data centres you can't point to on a map.
Matter and engagement management, stopwatch time recording, retainer burn-down, an audit trail on every entry, and AML and client-account workflows that are part of the system — not a bolt-on. UK data residency on every plan.
The principle: nothing happens off the record. Every minute, every disbursement, every document version and every status change is logged, attributed and timestamped — so billing is complete, retainers are honest, and an SRA inspection finds a clean, contemporaneous trail rather than a reconstruction.
This is what the SRA-conscious fee earner sees. Every annotation is a compliance risk closed, a six-minute unit captured, or a reconciliation you can hand to your COFA without flinching.
The matter list at Hartley & Cole LLP — no matter goes "Open" until the checks are green.
Inside PROB-0144 — the time ledger, the client-account balance and the key dates that protect you.
Conveyancing, family, wills and probate, commercial. A handful of fee earners who need LEAP-grade workflow without LEAP-grade per-seat fees.
One fee earner who still has to be SRA-compliant, AML-compliant and reconciled. The system carries the compliance weight so you can carry the caseload.
Matter-driven, document-heavy, audit-sensitive work where a defensible record is the product.
Trapped in an ageing practice management suite with rising per-seat costs? We migrate matters, time and ledgers, and run in parallel until sign-off.
"We'd been writing off the small stuff for years without realising it. With time capture built into the matter, the recorded hours simply went up — same caseload, more honest billing. And the first time we faced a fee query, the audit trail closed it in an afternoon."
— Pilot firm · three-partner high-street practice · South Bucks
Software, hosting, hourly off-site backups, UK accounting and support — included. Unlimited matters, five fee earners, UK data residency on every plan. Fourteen days free, no card. Migration from your current practice management suite available.
Direct: [email protected] · Navigare Space Ltd · 73 Lent Green Lane, Burnham SL1 7AS · Company No. 11380511