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 reconciled three ways on a schedule. Navigare Legal is that system, built for fee earners who would rather practise law than wrestle software.
Your matter database goes down the morning a limitation deadline falls: how many hours of unbilled time and how many file notes would you lose?
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 where nobody can tell you who opened a file, when, or who else could.
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. Access by role, and a hash-chained, tamper-evident audit trail, 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, a nightly backup with a separate daily off-site copy, UK accounting and e-mail support answered within one working day — included. Unlimited matters, five fee earners, and the fleet-wide restore drill on a weekly scheduled timer — it restores the databases we run into throwaway copies, and every result is published on the proof page. 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
Not for practices past five fee earners, for legal aid billing, or for firms already settled on LEAP or Clio.
The scheduled weekly drill restores matter records, time entries and the client ledger; uploaded documents are not yet covered, and each result will be published.