# ClearMatter

> Practice management, legal accounts and compliance for UK law firms. ClearMatter is a practice management, legal accounting and compliance platform for UK law firms. It captures billable time automatically from the work fee earners already do, enforces client money rules before a posting is accepted, builds the AML and client due diligence file during onboarding, and puts email filing and document drafting inside Outlook and Word.

ClearMatter is built by Techsperience Ltd (registered in England and Wales) for UK law firms — solicitors, licensed conveyancers, legal cashiers, practice managers and managing partners. It covers property, private client, commercial and litigation work; it is not restricted to conveyancing.

## What ClearMatter does

- Automatic billable time capture with suggested time entries and confidence scores
- Matter management with client and office balances visible per matter
- Double-entry legal ledger where entries cannot be edited after the event
- Client money controls validated before a posting is accepted
- Client-to-office transfers routed through approval, with no self-approval
- Bank statement import, automatic matching, adjustments and reconciliation sign-off
- Invoicing from work in progress, bulk billing, credit notes and write-offs
- Completion statements generated from matter data
- SDLT and Land Registry fee calculators
- VAT returns prepared and submitted to HMRC under Making Tax Digital
- Purchase ledger for supplier bills, expenses and disbursements
- AML and client due diligence: Companies House lookup, identity and address verification, sanctions and PEP screening, source of funds, risk levels
- Conflict checks, ethical walls and matter-level confidentiality controls
- Visual matter process designer with tasks, documents, questions and approvals per step
- Client portal with secure link sign-in, onboarding forms, quote acceptance and online payment
- Quote builder with rate cards and pricing rules; lead and referral tracking
- Outlook add-in that suggests the matter for an email and files it with attachments
- Word add-in for opening and saving matter documents
- Digital dictation with transcription and drafting from firm templates
- Document templates, document packs and matter-linked document storage
- Firm reporting: aged work in progress, aged debt, profit and loss, fee earner productivity
- Completions tracker, key dates, calendar and task lists
- Full audit trail of every significant action, exportable as evidence
- A separate database per firm

## Pages

- [Home](https://clearmatter.co.uk/): ClearMatter is practice management, legal accounts and compliance for UK law firms. Automatic time capture, client money controls checked before posting, AML onboarding, and email and document filing from Outlook and Word.
- [Interactive demo](https://clearmatter.co.uk/demo): Click through ClearMatter in your browser. Follow a matter from instruction and AML onboarding through automatic time capture, billing, completion and reconciliation. No sign-up, no sales call.
- [Time recording](https://clearmatter.co.uk/time-recording): Stop losing fees to unrecorded work. ClearMatter turns the activity your fee earners already perform into suggested time entries with confidence scores, reviewed in one screen a day and posted straight to work in progress.
- [Legal accounting](https://clearmatter.co.uk/legal-accounting): A double-entry legal ledger where entries cannot be edited after the event, client money rules checked before a posting is accepted, approval-gated client-to-office transfers, bank reconciliation with sign-off, and Making Tax Digital VAT returns.
- [AML & compliance](https://clearmatter.co.uk/compliance-aml): Build the compliance file as you onboard. Companies House lookup, electronic identity and address verification, sanctions and PEP screening, source of funds, risk levels, conflict checks, ethical walls and a complete audit trail.
- [Client portal](https://clearmatter.co.uk/client-portal): Quote, onboard, verify and get paid in one guided journey. A branded client portal with secure link sign-in, onboarding forms, document tasks, quote acceptance and card payment that posts straight to the matter.
- [Outlook & Word](https://clearmatter.co.uk/microsoft-365): File email and attachments to the right matter from inside Outlook, open and save matter documents from Word, and dictate a letter to get a draft back from your own template.
- [Matter management](https://clearmatter.co.uk/matter-management): Design how your firm runs a matter type once, in a visual designer. Each step carries its own tasks, documents, questions and approvals, so supervision is a glance and handovers stop hurting.
- [Blog](https://clearmatter.co.uk/blog): Notes from the team building ClearMatter: legal practice management, legal accounting and compliance for UK law firms.
- [Welcome to ClearMatter](https://clearmatter.co.uk/blog/welcome-to-clearmatter): We're building a modern practice management platform for UK law firms — here's why, and what's coming next.

## Questions and answers

### Home (https://clearmatter.co.uk/)

**What is ClearMatter?**

ClearMatter is a practice management, legal accounting and compliance platform for UK law firms. It brings matters, client money, billing, AML onboarding, documents and firm reporting into one system, so the work a firm does and the money it bills stay connected.

**Is ClearMatter only for conveyancing firms?**

No. ClearMatter is built for UK legal practice generally — property, private client, commercial and litigation. Matter types, processes, rate cards and document templates are configured per firm, so a probate matter runs differently to a freehold purchase. Property-specific tools such as SDLT and Land Registry fee calculators are included for firms that need them.

**How does ClearMatter capture time automatically?**

ClearMatter records the activity a fee earner performs across matters, groups it into work sessions, and turns each session into a suggested time entry with a confidence score, rounded to the nearest six minutes and marked billable or not. The fee earner reviews the day's suggestions in one screen and accepts, edits or dismisses each one. Accepted entries post to the matter's work in progress.

**Does ClearMatter handle client account and the Solicitors Accounts Rules?**

Yes. ClearMatter runs a double-entry legal ledger in which entries cannot be edited after the event — corrections are made as reversing entries. Client money rules are checked before a posting is accepted rather than reported on afterwards, transfers from client to office are routed for approval with no self-approval, and bank reconciliation runs through import, matching, adjustment and sign-off.

**Does ClearMatter work with Outlook and Word?**

Yes. The Outlook add-in suggests the likely matter for the email you are reading, files it with its attachments, and tells you if a colleague has already filed it. The Word add-in lets you browse matter folders, open a document and save it back to the matter without leaving Word.

**Is our firm’s data kept separate from other firms?**

Yes. Every firm gets its own database rather than sharing tables with other practices. Within the firm, conflict checks, ethical walls and matter-level access controls are enforced on every request, and reports and exports are filtered to what the person requesting them is allowed to see.

**Who builds ClearMatter, and how do we see it?**

ClearMatter is built by Techsperience Ltd, registered in England and Wales. There is an interactive demo on this site, and live demonstrations are run against the kind of work your firm actually does — your matter types, fees and reporting. Contact hello@techsperience.co.uk to arrange one.

### Interactive demo (https://clearmatter.co.uk/demo)

**Do I need to sign up to use the demo?**

No. The interactive demo runs entirely in your browser with sample data. There is nothing to install, no account to create and no sales call required.

**Is the demo the real product?**

The demo is a faithful walkthrough of how ClearMatter works, built with sample matters and figures so you can click through the flow without a login. A live demonstration on your own matter types and fee structures is the next step.

**What does the demo cover?**

Taking an instruction, running client due diligence and screening, capturing time automatically, raising a bill from work in progress, producing a completion statement, transferring money from client to office through approval, and reconciling the client account.

### Time recording (https://clearmatter.co.uk/time-recording)

**How is this different from a timer or a stopwatch?**

A timer only records the work someone remembers to start it for. ClearMatter works the other way around: it records the activity a fee earner performs across matters, groups it into work sessions, and presents the result as suggested entries to confirm. Nothing depends on remembering to press a button.

**How accurate are the suggestions?**

Each suggestion carries a confidence score, so a fee earner can see at a glance which entries need attention. Sessions shorter than three minutes are ignored, durations are rounded to the nearest six minutes, and every suggestion can be edited or dismissed before it counts.

**Does time go straight onto the bill?**

No. Nothing is billed automatically. A suggestion becomes a time entry only when a fee earner accepts it. Accepted time posts to the matter’s work in progress, where it can be reviewed, written off or invoiced.

**Can we still record time manually?**

Yes. Manual entry, rate cards, activity codes and time targets are all part of the system. Automatic capture removes the work of reconstruction; it does not remove control.

**How does captured time become an invoice?**

Accepted time sits in work in progress against the matter. From there you can generate an invoice for a single matter or run bulk billing across many, with credit notes and write-offs handled in the same place.

### Legal accounting (https://clearmatter.co.uk/legal-accounting)

**How does ClearMatter protect client money?**

Client money rules are evaluated before a posting is accepted, not reported on afterwards. A posting that would breach them does not go on the ledger. Transfers from client account to office account are raised as requests and routed for approval, and nobody can approve their own request.

**Can an entry be changed or deleted after posting?**

No. Journal entries, journal lines and postings are written once and never amended or removed. A correction is made as a reversing entry, so the original transaction and its correction are both visible. The same applies to the audit record.

**How does bank reconciliation work?**

You import a bank statement, ClearMatter matches statement lines against ledger postings automatically, you confirm or adjust the matches it could not resolve, and then sign the reconciliation off. The sign-off is recorded and cannot be quietly rewritten.

**Can we submit VAT returns to HMRC?**

Yes. ClearMatter connects to HMRC under Making Tax Digital, retrieves your VAT obligations, prepares the return from ledger data and submits it.

**What financial reporting is included?**

Aged work in progress, aged debt, profit and loss, fee earner productivity, matters carrying work in progress, and VAT. Reports and exports are filtered to what the person requesting them is permitted to see.

**Does it handle supplier bills and disbursements?**

Yes. A purchase ledger covers suppliers, bills, direct expense payments and quick expenses, so disbursements are recorded against the matter as they are incurred rather than reconstructed at billing time.

### AML & compliance (https://clearmatter.co.uk/compliance-aml)

**What does ClearMatter cover for AML and client due diligence?**

Company lookup and population from Companies House, electronic identity and address verification, sanctions and PEP screening, beneficial owner records, source of funds capture and verification, risk levels with documented overrides, and recording of suspicious activity reports — all held against the client and matter.

**When does the compliance work happen?**

During onboarding, as part of the client journey, rather than as a separate exercise afterwards. The client completes your forms in the portal, verification runs against them, and the file builds itself as a by-product of starting the matter.

**How are conflicts and confidential matters handled?**

Conflict checks run when a matter is created and the result is recorded. Confidential matters can be placed behind ethical walls with explicit membership, and matter-level access is checked on every request — including by reports, exports and background jobs.

**What can we show an auditor or the SRA?**

Every significant action is recorded with who did it and when, and the record is exportable as evidence. Financial entries cannot be edited after the event, and authorisation decisions are logged alongside the operations they permitted.

**Is screening kept up to date?**

Sanctions list data is synchronised so screening runs against current information rather than a snapshot taken when the client was first onboarded.

### Client portal (https://clearmatter.co.uk/client-portal)

**Do clients need a password?**

No. Clients sign in through a secure link sent to them, so there is no password to create, forget or reset — one of the most common reasons onboarding stalls.

**What can a client do in the portal?**

Complete onboarding forms, provide the details needed for identity and address verification, review and accept a fee quote, upload and return documents you have requested, see progress on their matter, and pay.

**How do clients pay?**

By card through a secure checkout, or by bank transfer which you mark off when it lands. Either way the receipt posts against the matter, so the ledger reflects the payment rather than waiting for someone to key it in.

**Is the portal branded to our firm?**

Yes. Firm branding, document templates and email templates are configured per firm, so the client journey looks like your practice rather than a software vendor.

**How are quotes produced?**

From your rate cards and pricing rules, with fees, disbursements and VAT broken out. The client accepts online, and leads and referral sources are tracked so you can see which sources actually convert.

### Outlook & Word (https://clearmatter.co.uk/microsoft-365)

**How does email filing work?**

Open an email in Outlook and the ClearMatter task pane suggests the matters it is most likely to belong to. File it in a click, with or without its attachments. If a colleague has already filed the same email, it tells you before you duplicate it.

**What does the Word add-in do?**

It lets you browse a matter’s folders, open a document straight into Word, and save your work back to the matter — without going through a shared drive or downloading and re-uploading files.

**How does dictation produce a document?**

Dictate against a matter. The recording is transcribed, combined with live matter data and your firm’s template, and returned as a draft document to check and send. Dictations can also be assigned to a queue for someone else to complete.

**Why does this matter?**

Fee earners resist systems that add steps. Putting filing and drafting inside the applications they already work in means the matter file stays complete without anyone having to be disciplined about it — which is also what makes automatic time capture accurate.

### Matter management (https://clearmatter.co.uk/matter-management)

**Can we design our own matter processes?**

Yes. Processes are built in a visual designer per matter type. Each step carries its own tasks, documents, questions to answer and notification recipients, and you change the process when the firm changes rather than when the software allows.

**How does this help with supervision?**

Every live matter is tracked against its process, so the current step and the next action are visible without asking. Overdue tasks, upcoming completions and key dates surface on the dashboard rather than in someone’s head.

**What happens when a fee earner is away?**

The matter shows its own next step, with the tasks and documents attached to it. Cover is a matter of picking up the file rather than reconstructing what the last person intended to do.

**What can partners see?**

Active matters, work in progress, outstanding invoices, money received, overdue tasks and upcoming completions on one screen, plus aged work in progress, aged debt, profit and loss and fee earner productivity — all limited to what each person is allowed to see.

**Are approvals part of the workflow?**

Yes. Decisions that carry risk — a client-to-office transfer, for example — are routed to the right person, and the decision is recorded against the matter. Nobody can approve their own request.

## Contact

- Email: hello@techsperience.co.uk
- Interactive demo: https://clearmatter.co.uk/demo
- Sitemap: https://clearmatter.co.uk/sitemap.xml