The file
The matter, held whole — not a folder and not a transcript
Issues, facts, authorities, documents, events and obligations, each one knowing where it came from. It is built from the papers you drop in, kept current by everything said afterwards, and you never have to open it to keep it right.
It starts with the papers
Drop the bundle in. Nothing needs naming.
Pleadings, affidavits and bundles come out as individually addressable paragraphs, each quotable with its page and paragraph reference. Whatever state they reached you in.
Scanned bundles go through OCR first, so a photocopied annexure is as quotable as a native PDF.
Three versions of the same affidavit arrive as one document with a history, not as three documents.
Each paragraph is cross-referenced to the issue and the fact it bears on, which is what makes a contradiction findable later. There is no tagging step and no folder structure to agree on.
¶ 44, p 17 — issue 1 · prescription, delivery date asserted
¶ 52–58, p 21 — issue 2 · authority to sign, annexure “FA7”
Annexure FA7 — scanned, OCR’d, quotable to the line
¶ 44 again — same paragraph in the 8 March version, not filed twice
The spine
A matter is a set of contested issues, and each one has a state
A matter is a set of contested issues, each carrying a state: pleaded, argued, conceded, decided or abandoned. It is not a label you set — it moves as the matter moves, from the papers and from what is said in court.
Because the state moves, it can be asked questions: what is still open, what was conceded and by whom, and what you are about to draft heads on that the bench has already decided against you.
The state machine is what turns a pile of material into a visible position.
1 · Prescription — argued · contradicted from the bar, 10:41
2 · Authority to sign — argued · their authority not yet met
3 · Quantum — pleaded · not reached
4 · Costs — pleaded · reserved
5 · Locus standi — abandoned by the applicant, 14 Aug
What is in it
Six registers, none of which you fill in
Six registers — issues, chronology, parties, authorities, obligations and documents — and you fill in none of them.
Issues, live
Every contested issue with its current state, what it rests on, and what has been said about it since the papers closed.
The chronology
Built as it goes, from the documents and from what is said. Dates the parties disagree about are shown as disagreements rather than resolved silently into one.
Parties and representatives
Who is on the matter, who appears for whom, and who said what — including the moment counsel on the other side changes.
The authorities table
Every case cited by anyone, and what it was cited for, with a treatment signal when one you are relying on has been overruled, distinguished or appealed since.
Obligations and deadlines
Obligations carry their dates — what the bench gave you, what was undertaken in a consultation, what the rules impose — and each one arrives as a card before it binds you.
Search, both kinds
Full-text search and structured search, so where a matter actually stands is a question with an answer.
The question you cannot ask a folder
Where does this matter actually stand?
A document management system can find a word in a file. It cannot say that the date your heads rely on has been contradicted twice, once from the bar and once by your own client.
The file can, because it is not storing documents. It is storing who asserted what, when, against which issue, on which page.
One screen at the start of the day: what is open, what is due, and where the risk sits.
3 open issues — one carrying a live contradiction
2 obligations due — supplementary affidavit, Fri 3 Oct
1 authority — appealed
1 draft — heads of argument, resting on a contradicted fact
After court
The file is versioned, so the hearing note is a difference, not an essay
The difference between the file before court and the file after it is the hearing note, and nobody types it.
Heads of argument
Heads of argument and the hearing note draft from the file, each line showing what it rests on.
Correspondence and attendance notes
In your firm’s format, from the record of what was actually said rather than from what you remember of it.
A client update in plain language
The same events without the Latin, for the person paying for them.
All of it as proposals
Every inference arrives as a card to accept, edit or dismiss, and that card is the only way anything reaches the file.
Bring one matter. See what the file already knows.
Half an hour, your own papers, and one hearing you have already had. If it does not find something you missed, we have not earned the next conversation.