AI for Law Firms

Intake, Document Drafting, Matter Admin, and Billing for Small Practices

Overview

A small firm loses money in predictable places, and almost none of them are the legal work. Enquiries that sat too long. Time worked and never recorded. Bills raised months late and then queried. Matters that went quiet and were forgotten. Marketing that only happens when the pipeline thins.

All of it is administrative, all of it competes with fee-earning time, and fee-earning time wins every contest, which is why the pattern persists in firms that know about it.

Sistava handles that layer. Every piece of legal judgement, every conflict decision, every settled document, and everything published stays with a qualified person, and the arrangement only works because that line is held rather than blurred.

At a Glance

Same day: Enquiry acknowledgement
Your precedents: What drafts are built from
Second net: Date tracking, never the only one
99/mo: Starting price

Before / After

Before: Enquiries sitting in a shared inbox over a weekend
After: Acknowledged the same day with the facts already gathered
Before: A precedent bank nobody can navigate
After: Indexed, with drafts built from the closest match
Before: Deadlines noticed on the day, during a court week
After: Tracked with lead time, and quiet matters surfaced
Before: Time reconstructed from memory on a Friday
After: Proposed from actual activity, confirmed by a fee earner
Before: Bills raised months late and then queried
After: Prompt, with specific narratives per matter
Before: Marketing only when the pipeline looks thin
After: Steady, drafted within the rules, reviewed before publishing

Benefits

Prepared Intake Files

Structured facts, an initial conflict screen against your records, and a summary a fee earner can decide on in minutes.

First-Draft Documents

Built from your own precedent bank with matter details populated and judgement points flagged for the reviewer.

Matter Tracking

Deadlines with lead time, outstanding items per file, routine chasing, and quiet matters surfaced before they are forgotten.

Proposed Timesheets

Reconstructed from correspondence, documents, and calendar activity for a fee earner to confirm and adjust.

Bills and Narratives

Raised promptly with specific per-matter narratives, and outstanding accounts chased consistently.

Reviewed Marketing

Practice-area content and referral nurture drafted within regulatory constraints, published only after approval.

Benefits

The Regulated Line Is Held

No advice, no conflict clearance, no settled document, and nothing published without a qualified person. Those are not gaps, they are the design.

Drafts From Your Bank

Working from your own precedents rather than generating from scratch is what makes drafting assistance usable rather than a fabrication risk.

A Second Net, Not the Only One

Date tracking is built to sit alongside your existing diary, because limitation dates justify redundancy rather than consolidation.

Flags Rather Than Resolves

Where judgement is required, the point is raised for the reviewer instead of being quietly settled inside a document that looks finished.

How It Works

Bring In the Practice: Precedent bank, matter files, correspondence, and your existing diary. The indexing step alone usually surfaces value the firm already owned.
Start With Intake or Time: Both show a return within a week: enquiries answered the day they arrive, and recorded time that reflects the work actually done.
Keep Every Judgement With Your People: Conflicts, advice, settled documents, filings, and published material stay with qualified staff. The admin around them stops competing for their hours.

Comparison

Dimension	Traditional	With Sista
Enquiry response	Whenever someone has time	Same day, with the facts already gathered
Drafting a document	Rebuilt from the last similar matter	From the closest precedent, mechanically populated
Deadline tracking	One diary, checked when someone remembers	A second independent net with lead time
Time recording	Friday recall, always short	Proposed from evidence, confirmed by the fee earner
Billing	A quarterly catch-up that gets queried	Prompt, specific, chased consistently
Marketing	Bursts when the pipeline thins	Steady, within the rules, reviewed

What Stays With a Qualified Person, Without Exception

This section is the most important one on the page, because a tool in this space that is vague about it is dangerous to your practice.

Legal advice, conflict clearance, the decision to accept a matter, settling any document, court filings, and anything published about the firm all stay with qualified people. Not as a default that can be switched off, but as the shape of how this is meant to be used.

What is handled is the administrative layer around those judgements: gathering, indexing, populating, tracking, reconstructing, chasing, and drafting first versions for review. That layer is where a small firm loses its hours and its money, and it requires none of the professional judgement that clients are paying for.

Fabricated Authority Is the Risk to Watch

Several jurisdictions have now seen sanctions arising from filings containing invented case citations produced by AI tools. It is worth naming plainly rather than leaving implicit.

The structural mitigation here is that drafting works from your own precedent bank rather than generating documents from nothing, which is a materially different risk profile. That reduces exposure; it does not eliminate the reviewer obligation to verify every authority relied on.

If any supplier tells you their tool removes the need to check citations, that is the moment to stop the conversation. Verification is a professional duty and it cannot be delegated to software, ours included.

FAQ

Does this give legal advice?

No. It handles administration, drafting first versions from your precedents, tracking, and preparation. Advice, conflict clearance, and settling documents stay with qualified people, and that boundary is the design rather than a limitation.

Can we rely on it for limitation dates?

As a second net alongside your existing diary, never as a replacement. Those dates carry consequences that justify two independent systems checking each other.

What about invented citations?

Drafting from your own precedent bank rather than generating from scratch materially reduces that risk, and it does not remove the reviewer duty to verify every authority. Anyone claiming otherwise should not be trusted with your filings.

How is client confidentiality handled?

Material stays inside your workspace and is not used to train anything. Given the professional obligations, read the detail on our trust pages properly rather than relying on a sentence here.

Does it work for our jurisdiction?

It drafts to the jurisdiction you specify from precedents you supply. It does not assess enforceability anywhere and will say so rather than implying local validity it cannot judge.

Will it contact clients directly?

Routine chasing of outstanding items can be handled where you allow it. Anything of substance is drafted and waits for a fee earner, because correspondence from a firm carries professional weight.

Specialists

Client Intake and Conflict Screening — Respond to enquiries the day they arrive
Document Drafting From Your Precedents — First drafts from your own bank, not a generic template
Matter Admin and Deadlines — Nothing slips because someone was in court
Time Recording and Billing — Capture the work you actually did
Firm Marketing and Referrals — Stay visible without it costing billable hours