Odoo for Legal
Odoo rollouts for law firms and legal practices
Solicitors, chambers and in-house teams. Matter opening and conflict checks, time that gets recorded, client money kept separate, and bills that stand up to assessment.
A law firm rarely buys software because the screens are wrong. It buys because the hours are recorded from memory on a Friday, the client account is reconciled in a spreadsheet, and nobody can say how much unbilled work is sitting on the files. An Odoo rollout for a practice is therefore two projects: getting the matter and money structure right, and getting fee earners to record time on the day they do the work. The first is our problem. The second decides whether the project pays for itself.
Where it hurts today
Time is written up from memory
Work happens on the phone, in the corridor and on the train, then gets typed up days later. What survives is the hour somebody remembered, not the six minutes they actually spent. The gap never appears on a report because it was never recorded to begin with.
The conflict check leaves no trace
Someone searches the files they happen to know about and says it looks clear. Two years later the only questions anyone asks are who ran the search, when, and what came back. None of the three has an answer.
Client money lives outside the ledger
Money on account, payments made for the client and transfers to office are tracked on a spreadsheet next to a bank statement. A file that has gone below nothing is found at the next reconciliation rather than refused at the moment somebody tried to post it.
Disbursements are reported as income
Court fees, counsel, experts and searches are money laid out for the client and recovered at cost. Booked to the same revenue account as fees, they inflate turnover and destroy any honest view of what the firm earns per hour.
Key dates sit in one personโs diary
Hearings, filing dates and the limitation date that ends the claim live in an individual calendar. When that person is on holiday or leaves, the file does not stop running. This is the risk that closes firms, and it is the one most often managed informally.
The modules that carry the load
Each one is here for a reason specific to legal practice, not because it appears on a standard module list.
- ๐ฏ Odoo CRM
Enquiries as a pipeline with the opening checks attached, so a new instruction cannot become a matter before the conflict search and the engagement letter exist.
- ๐ Odoo Project
The matter itself: practice area, responsible fee earner, supervising partner, parties, and the key dates that raise activities ahead of time rather than on the morning they fall due.
- โฑ๏ธ Odoo Timesheets
Time recorded against the matter as it happens, timer or typed, rounded to the firmโs charging unit and carrying a narrative the client can read.
- ๐ผ Odoo Accounting
Fees, disbursements and client money each posted to their own accounts, so recovered outlay is never reported as turnover and the client ledger is not a spreadsheet.
- ๐ Odoo Documents
A file index per matter: what the firm holds, which originals are in the strongroom, and who signed them out.
- โ๏ธ Odoo Sign
Engagement letters, retainers and settlement paperwork signed with an audit trail, which is what removes days of courier time from every file opening.
- ๐ Odoo Knowledge
Precedents, checklists and the firmโs own way of running a file type, held where a new joiner will actually find it.
How the rollout runs
- 1 Clients, matters and the opening checks
Client master, matter numbering, practice areas, the conflict search and the due diligence a file cannot open without. Everything else attaches to the matter record, so this phase decides how good every later report is.
- 2 Time recording and the diary
Rate cards in the order they apply, charging unit, narratives, non-billable reasons, and the key date reminders. This is the adoption phase. It needs a partner visibly recording their own time in the first week, not a memo.
- 3 Disbursements, client money and bills
Opening balances loaded at a single stated cutover date and reconciled to the bank before anything is posted, then bills of costs assembled from real time and outlay rather than typed up.
- 4 Work in progress and realisation reporting
Unbilled value, write-offs, lock-up and recovery per fee earner and per practice area. Last, because a realisation figure is only honest once the write-offs behind it are being recorded properly.
What to have ready before kickoff
Projects that slip usually slip here, not in the build. Bring these to the first workshop.
- โ The matter list with responsible fee earner and current status, including the files that should have been closed years ago.
- โ Rate cards as they actually apply: rates agreed with a client, department rates, individual rates, and the date each one started.
- โ Unbilled time and unrecovered disbursements per matter at a single stated cutover date.
- โ The client account balance per client at that same date, reconciled to the bank by your cashier before anyone signs it off.
- โ Every key date already in the diary, particularly limitation dates. Assume the list you are handed is incomplete and check it against the files.
- โ A decision on the charging unit, and on who may write off work and above what value.
Where it connects
Systems we most often connect on legal practice projects. The full list is on the integrations page.
Legal Practice
For the feature view of conflict checks, matters, time recording, client account and bills of costs, read the solution page.
Open the Legal Practice solutionQuestions we get asked
Can client money be kept genuinely separate from the firmโs own accounts? +
Yes. Client funds are held on their own ledger per client, apart from the office accounts, with transfers to office only permitted against a bill that has already been delivered. Exactly which rules your practice has to satisfy is a jurisdiction question that we confirm with whoever owns compliance in your firm before configuring it, rather than assuming.
How do you get fee earners to actually record time? +
By making it faster than not doing it: a timer on the matter, a narrative that autofills from the activity, and a daily figure each person can see. The rest is management. We build the reporting that shows recorded hours per fee earner per day from week one, because the firms that fix this fix it in the first month or never.
Can we run hourly, fixed fee and capped matters in the same firm? +
Yes, and most firms do. The billing basis sits on the matter, and a cap is enforced at the point a bill would take the file past it rather than discovered afterwards. Time is still recorded on fixed fee work, because that is the only way to know whether the fixed fee was right.
Does the conflict check have to be a manual search? +
No. The names on both sides are searched against every file the firm holds, not only the ones the person searching has rights to see, and the search is stored as a record with its date, its searcher and its results. Going ahead despite a match requires a written reason. That record is the point of the exercise.
How long does a law firm rollout take? +
A practice of ten to forty fee earners typically runs in the 8 to 12 week band for matters, time recording and billing, with reporting following once a full billing cycle has run. Firms whose client account has never been reconciled to the ledger spend the extra time there, not on the software.