CaseDeskYour practice, on your machine.
Not on someone else's cloud.
CaseDesk is a desktop case-management system for solo and small-firm litigation attorneys. Case files, deadlines, trust ledgers, and client communications live in an encrypted database on your computer — not on our servers. We don't have servers.
Windows · free during beta · no license key, no account with us
Screenshots show fictional demo data.
Local-first, encrypted
Everything is stored on your machine in a SQLCipher-encrypted database, keyed through your OS keychain. Nothing in the app reports your data back to us — there is no telemetry and no vendor cloud.
AI on your own keys
Connect your own Anthropic or OpenAI account, or run a local model. AI requests go directly from your machine to your provider under your terms. We never see them, and there is no per-seat AI markup.
Built for deadlines
Thousands of jurisdiction-specific deadline rules verified against official court and statutory sources, with court-day and holiday-aware date math — and honest labeling that flags best-practice estimates as estimates.
Run the caseload
Matters, deadlines, and the calendar — the daily core, engineered for litigation.
Case command center
Every matter is a command center
Open a case and see where it stands: a phase timeline from pleading to trial, a days-to-trial countdown, pending deadlines, and a completeness meter that names what's missing.
- Case phase tracking across the full litigation lifecycle
- A practice-area tab — Premises Liability, Estate/Probate, HOA — with fields built for that kind of matter
- Parties & counsel, contacts, discovery, experts, witnesses, docket, evidence, signatures, communications, time, trust, and invoices — tabs on every case
- One-click status reports, and AI case analysis when you want it
Deadline engine
A deadline engine that shows its work
Set a trial date and CaseDesk computes the chain — discovery cutoff, expert disclosure, motion cutoffs — from jurisdiction-specific rules with the governing authority cited on every computed date.
- Auto-computed deadlines are labeled [Auto] with the rule and statute they came from
- Court-day and holiday-aware date math, hard vs. soft priority on every entry
- Overdue and coming-up alerts on the dashboard, so nothing slips silently
- Where a rule reflects best practice rather than a pinned statute, it's labeled an estimate
Calendar
Your whole month, at a glance
Month, week, and day views pull every deadline across every matter into one calendar, color-coded by urgency, with the case name on each entry.
- Manual and auto-computed deadlines side by side
- Filter by case, deadline type, or priority
- Jump from a calendar entry straight into the matter
Matters
Every matter, every practice area
From premises liability to probate to HOA disputes — 105+ practice areas each bring tailored fields, so an estate matter doesn't look like a car crash.
- Status, court, trial date, and category at a glance
- Search and filter across your whole caseload
- Archive closed matters without losing anything
Draft, file, and stay conflict-free
Substantive templates, guided intake, and ethics-grade conflict checking.
Documents & drafting
2,005 templates that already know your case
Substantive legal content — not blank forms — filtered to what's relevant to the matter you have open, with 148 merge fields that auto-fill from case data.
- Motions, pleadings, discovery, demand letters, intake questionnaires, government claims
- Real citations in the templates — an FTCA claim letter cites 28 U.S.C. § 2675
- Generate as-is, or hand it to AI Draft with your case context
- Honest by design: templates carry a banner telling you to verify citations before filing
Intake
Intake that starts with a conflict check
New matters open with a conflict check, then walk through case info, parties, counsel, and folder setup — or import the basics straight from a document.
- Conflict check first, before the matter exists
- Category-aware forms: matter type, venue, role, billing
- Import from a document to skip the retyping
Ethics
Conflicts caught before they become conflicts
Run any name against every party, counsel, expert, witness, and contact you've ever entered — across active, closed, and archived matters.
- Fuzzy matching catches name variants, transpositions, and corporate-suffix differences
- Exact matches on email or phone are always flagged high severity
- Every check is logged with a full results snapshot for ethics compliance
The business side, handled
Trust accounting, time, billing, and reports — without another subscription.
Trust / IOLTA
Trust accounting your state bar would recognize
IOLTA accounts with jurisdiction and bar number on file, per-client ledgers, and the reconciliation discipline the rules actually require.
- Deposits, disbursements, transfers, and void operations
- Three-way reconciliation and compliance alerts
- Client ledger, reconciliation, and account summary exports
- Lawyer-attestation gating on sensitive operations
Billing & reports
From time entry to LEDES file
Track time on the matter, bill it, and report it — including the formats insurance carriers demand.
- Case status reports with parties, deadlines, and financials in one document
- Billing summaries of time entries and expenses
- LEDES 1998B export for insurance-defense billing
- Invoices, recurring schedules, Stripe payment links, QuickBooks sync — on your own accounts
AI that stays yours
Your keys, your hardware, your choice — including fully offline.
AI, your way
Cloud keys or fully local — your call
Bring your own Anthropic or OpenAI key, or run models entirely on your own hardware. CaseDesk detects your GPU, shows what each model needs, and loads GGUF models from a local folder — privileged work product never has to leave the building.
- Case-aware AI assistant available from every screen
- Local model catalog with hardware requirements and open licenses stated up front
- AI drafting, case analysis, and document work under your control
- Claude Code plugin + MCP server: 180+ tools so AI assistants can work your matters under a read-first permission gate
And the rest of the iceberg
One application for the whole practice — not a bundle of subscriptions.
Tailored matter fields from civil litigation to probate, family, criminal, and agency practice.
Across civil, criminal, appellate, probate, unlawful detainer, family, bankruptcy, and administrative practice.
Statutes, case law, court rules, jury instructions — verified against official sources, with staleness flagging.
SOL coverage tied to your matters, so the longest deadline of all doesn't live in your head.
3,359 state and federal courts with websites, local rules, e-filing portals, and court forms pages.
Gmail and Outlook sync with review-based filing. Nothing auto-files.
Default-deny work-product firewall: nothing is visible to a client unless you mark it.
Deposition outlines, discovery tracking, experts, and witnesses — organized per matter.
Evidence tracking with a dedicated tab on every case.
PACER RSS docket sync brings federal filings to you.
Import from files, .eml/.msg email, or in bulk — with OCR and automatic folder classification.
Signature workflows with their own tab on every matter.
Billable time captured on the case, feeding invoices and billing summaries.
Damages calculator and medical-records tracking for injury practice.
Structured intake that flows straight into a new matter.
Search across your whole practice — locally, like everything else.
Automatic local backups of the encrypted database, on your schedule.
Client SMS through your own Twilio account, initiated by you.
Integrations, on your accounts
Every integration is off until you connect it with your own credentials — and each one talks to your account directly from your machine.
Why local-first matters for a law practice
Your files are privileged. A cloud practice-management vendor is a subpoena target, a breach target, and a subprocessor list you have to explain to clients. CaseDesk's answer is architectural: client data never reaches us because there is nothing of ours for it to reach. The only things that ever leave your machine are the requests you make through accounts you control — your email provider, your AI key, your payment processor.
- SQLCipher encryption at rest, keyed through your operating system's credential store.
- No telemetry, no analytics, no phone-home. The app has nothing to report to and nowhere to report it.
- Bring your own keys. Email, AI, payments, and texting run under your accounts, direct from your machine.
- Default-deny client portal. Work product is invisible to clients unless you individually mark it visible.
- Review-based email filing. You decide what gets filed to a matter — nothing auto-files.
- Ethics-grade audit trails. Conflict checks and trust operations are logged locally, with attestation gates where the rules demand them.
Pricing
No license key, no account, no credit card. You bring your own API keys for the services you choose to connect. Commercial terms will be announced before the beta ends, and nothing changes retroactively for your data — it's on your machine either way.
Request beta accessQuestions attorneys ask
Where does my data actually live?
In a SQLCipher-encrypted database on your own computer, keyed through your OS credential store. There is no server-side copy — we couldn't produce your files in response to a subpoena because we've never had them.
What ever leaves my machine?
Only requests you make through accounts you control: your email provider when you sync mail, your AI provider when you ask for a draft, your Stripe or QuickBooks account when you bill. Each integration is off until you connect it with your own credentials.
Which AI providers can I use?
Anthropic or OpenAI under your own API key, or a local model running entirely on your own hardware — in which case nothing leaves your machine at all. There's no per-seat AI markup because the AI relationship is yours, not ours.
Can I rely on the deadline calculations?
They're aids to a licensed attorney's judgment, not a substitute for it. Rules are verified against official court and statutory sources and cite their authority; where a rule reflects best practice rather than a pinned statute, it's labeled an estimate. Verify against official sources before relying on any date.
What platforms does it run on?
Windows today, during the free beta. Email us about your setup — platform support is shaped by what beta attorneys actually run.
What happens when the beta ends?
Commercial terms will be announced before the beta ends. Nothing changes retroactively for your data — it's stored on your machine either way, and you can export or simply keep the database.
Run your practice from your own machine.
Free during beta. Email us a line about your practice — state, practice areas, firm size — and we'll get you set up.
Request beta access