CaseDeskYour practice, on your machine.
Not on someone else's cloud.
CaseDesk is a desktop case manager for solo and small-firm litigators — with depth no cloud tool matches: 106 practice areas that each capture the facts and math their field actually needs, a 12,900-entry legal library, Bitcoin-anchored evidence, a deadline engine that cites its authority, and AI that runs on your own hardware. Your files never leave your computer, because we don't have servers.
Windows · free during beta · no license key, no account with us
Screenshots show fictional demo data.
Three things no other case manager does
Most legal software is the same cloud database with a different logo. This isn't.
Bitcoin-anchored chain of custody
Hash a document to the Bitcoin blockchain and prove it existed, unaltered, on a date no opposing party can dispute — then generate a court-ready declaration and certificate. Cryptographic evidence integrity, built into your case file.
Your files never leave your machine
Everything lives in an encrypted database on your own computer. We don't operate servers, so there's nothing of ours to breach, subpoena, or add to a subprocessor list you have to explain to clients.
AI that runs on your own hardware
Run a legal-grade model entirely on your own GPU, or bring your own cloud key. Case-aware drafting and analysis with no per-seat AI tax — and no privileged work product handed to a vendor.
Built for your practice area — down to the field
Not one generic form with a dropdown. 106 practice areas, each with its own purpose-built data model — the fields, the doctrines, and even the math its cases actually turn on.
Specialized by design
The right fields — and the right calculations
A DUI matter tracks field-sobriety clues, chemical-test partition ratios, and the DMV Admin Per Se hearing. An estate matter tracks the Heggstad petition and the creditor-claim bar. The typical specialized area carries roughly 180 distinct fields — and several areas compute, not just collect. Here, a California DUI's facts drive a live sentencing-exposure calculator.
- Purpose-built sub-sections per area — not a bag of generic "custom fields"
- Built-in calculators: DUI sentencing exposure, Lemon Law restitution, present-value damages
- Multi-party, treatment-timeline, expert, and element-by-element trackers where the practice needs them
- Honest by design: computed exposure is labeled "verify against the current statute before advising"
Liability status (invitee / licensee / trespasser) · actual vs constructive notice · government-claim deadlines · damages & expert-needs tracking
Accident reconstruction · admitted fault · airbag & injury detail · adjuster and arbitration · treatment status
Asset division & appraisals · support arrears tracking · custody · attorney-fee and sanctions requests
Pitchess, Marsden, Romero & Faretta motion tracking · Brady disclosure log · sentencing-guideline exposure
Offense tier · prior-count lookback · chemical test & partition ratio · DMV Admin Per Se · live sentencing-exposure calculator
WCAB case number & district office · QME/AME · Whole-Person Impairment & PD% rating string · MPN / UR / IMR
ABC-test classification · overtime & double-time · back-pay periods · PAGA aggrieved-employees · arbitration challenge
Answer-due tracking · warranty of habitability · buyout offers · notice service · bad-faith penalty claims
Schedules A–J · means-test result · §303(h) order for relief · cramdown plan · disposable-income commitment
Heggstad petition · IAEA authority · creditor-claim bar · Form 706 estate-tax due date · holographic/pour-over will
A-Number · asylum one-year clock · U / T / VAWA / SIJS · I-751 · LCA number · crime-of-moral-turpitude flags
Song-Beverly restitution & civil-penalty calculator · repair-visit log · mileage offset · manufacturer buyback
That's a dozen of them. Here's every one.
All 106 supported practice areas
Every one ships with its own matter fields — pick it at intake and the case is built for that practice.
- ADA/Accessibility
- Administrative
- Adoption
- Agricultural
- Animal Law
- Antitrust
- Appellate
- Art Law
- Asset Forfeiture
- Auto Accident
- Aviation
- Banking/Financial
- Bankruptcy
- Cannabis Law
- Civil Rights
- Class Action
- Construction Defect
- Consumer Protection
- Contracts/Business
- Creditors' Rights
- Criminal Defense
- Cybersecurity
- Defamation
- DUI/DWI
- Education Employment
- Education Law
- Elder Abuse
- Election Law
- Eminent Domain
- Employment
- Entertainment
- Environmental
- ERISA
- Estate Planning
- Estate/Probate
- Family Law
- FDA/Life Sciences
- FELA (Railroad)
- Foreclosure
- Franchise
- General Liability
- Government Contracts
- Healthcare Regulatory
- HOA
- Hospitality
- Immigration
- Insurance Bad Faith
- Insurance Coverage
- Insurance Defense
- International Arbitration
- International Trade
- IP - Copyright
- IP - Patent
- IP - Trade Secret
- IP - Trademark
- Juvenile
- Land Use
- Landlord/Tenant
- Legal Malpractice
- Lemon Law
- Life Insurance
- M&A Litigation
- Maritime
- Mass Tort
- Media/Entertainment
- Medical Malpractice
- Military Justice
- Mining
- Nonprofit
- Nursing Home
- Oil & Gas
- OSHA
- Personal Injury
- Premises Liability
- Prison Litigation
- Privacy/Data Breach
- Product Liability
- Product Recall
- Professional Liability
- Professional Licensing
- Professional Malpractice
- Property Tax
- Public Finance
- Real Estate
- Securities
- Sexual Abuse (Civil)
- Shareholder Dispute
- Social Security
- Sports Law
- Subrogation
- Surety
- Tax Litigation
- Telecom/Utilities
- Title Insurance
- Toxic Tort
- Tribal Law
- Trucking
- Unemployment Insurance
- Vaccine Injury
- Veterans Benefits
- Wage & Hour
- Water Rights
- Whistleblower
- White Collar Crime
- Workers' Compensation
- Wrongful Death
Look closer at the parts that matter
The features that make CaseDesk worth switching for — in the actual app.
Evidence integrity
Prove a document hasn't changed — to a jury
CaseDesk fingerprints each document with SHA-256, signs it with your key, and anchors that hash to the Bitcoin blockchain through OpenTimestamps. The result is a timestamp no one can backdate or forge.
- Per-document SHA-256 hash, signed and independently verifiable
- Anchored to a Bitcoin block — a public, immutable timestamp
- Live status: confirmed with block height, or pending confirmation
- One click generates a declaration and certificate of authenticity for filing
AI, in your control
Not a chatbot — an AI that works the file
Ask for a litigation snapshot and CaseDesk answers from the matter's own record — deadlines, posture, exposure — then drafts from your templates. Run it on a local model so nothing leaves the building, or bring your own Anthropic or OpenAI key.
- Reads the open case: cites the trial date, the discovery cutoff, the governing rule
- Deep Summary reads a matter's documents and populates its practice-area fields for you
- Built-in litigation skills — deposition prep, claim charts, chronologies, demand drafting
- Fully local option: a legal-grade LLM on your own GPU, zero data out, no per-seat markup
Legal research library
A 12,900-entry library that comes to the case
Statutes, case law, court rules, practice guides, jury instructions, regulations, and uniform acts — verified against official sources, with the citation and jurisdiction on every entry. All 50 states, DC, and federal.
- Seven categories, full-text search, and jurisdiction and category filters
- Most entries verified against the official source, with staleness flagging when law ages
- Cross-references between related entries — and per-case smart suggestions by cause of action
- Live CourtListener search built in: pull a current opinion and save it to your library
Deadline engine
Deadlines that show their authority
Set a trial date and CaseDesk computes the chain — discovery cutoff, expert disclosure, motion cutoffs — from jurisdiction-specific rules, with the governing statute cited on every computed date.
- Auto-computed deadlines labeled [Auto] with the rule they came from
- Court-day and holiday-aware math across 51 jurisdictions
- Overdue and coming-up alerts so nothing slips silently
- Best-practice estimates are labeled as estimates — never dressed up as pinned law
Email that never lets one slip
Your inbox, synced to your matters and triaged — without a single message auto-filing itself behind your back.
Auto-syncs in the background
CaseDesk quietly pulls new Gmail and Outlook mail — inbound and sent — into your review queue every few minutes, all day. Connect once with your own account; nothing is stored on our end.
Sorted to the right matter, for you
Every message is matched to a case the moment it arrives, by comparing senders and recipients against your parties and contacts — so mail lands next to the matter it belongs to, not in an undifferentiated pile.
Review-based filing — never automatic
A "Needs Review" queue shows each email with its suggested matter. You file it, dismiss it, or unfile it — nothing attaches to a client file without your say-so. Bulk actions when the volume's heavy.
Sentinel · response tracking
Never let an important email go cold
Sentinel watches who's waiting on you. It recognizes mail from opposing counsel, clients, and adjusters, and quietly tracks how long it's gone unanswered against a business-hours response window — then surfaces what's overdue on your dashboard, before it becomes a problem.
- Knows the sender: opposing counsel, client, insurance adjuster, co-counsel
- Business-hours clock with escalating tiers — nights and weekends don't count against you
- An "Awaiting your reply" list, ranked by urgency, right on your dashboard
- A quiet reminder, never a takeover — it surfaces; you decide
Run the whole caseload
The daily core — matters, calendar, and the command center for every case.
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
- The matter's own practice-area tab, plus parties, discovery, experts, witnesses, docket, evidence, signatures, time, trust, and invoices
- A structured case-memory journal — insights, case theories, risks, even "smoking gun" flags
- One-click status reports, and AI case analysis when you want it
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 — 106 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
Court intelligence
Every court, one click off the matter
Assign a court to a case and its own links live right on the matter — docket and case search, tentative rulings, local rules, remote-appearance info, and the court's website. No more digging through county pages mid-filing.
- 3,100+ trial courts mapped across all 50 states + DC
- Case search, local rules, remote appearance, and court website on every matter
- Tentative rulings where the court publishes them; e-filing and forms for federal
- A warning flag when a court's remote-appearance process isn't straightforward
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
Document management
Files that sort themselves
Import a folder and CaseDesk OCRs and auto-classifies each document — pleadings, discovery, medical records, correspondence — into the right folder by filename, content, and source path. The "AI Organize Files" button cleans up whatever's left unfiled.
- Auto-classification by filename, content, and source folder
- A folder-organized view with per-folder counts, not one flat dump
- OCR on import, so scanned documents are searchable
- Mark a document client-visible for the portal — off by default
Power tools for the litigation itself
Depositions, settlement exposure, and a memory for every fact the case turns on.
Deposition prep
A deposition outline builder, not a blank page
Build structured outlines — sections, topics, and questions — with importance flags, an exhibits list, and an impeachment tracker down the side. Start from a practice-area template, or let AI draft the whole thing.
- Practice-area outline templates with statute-cited topics
- Critical / important flags on every topic and question
- Exhibits and impeachment sources tracked alongside the questions
- One-click full AI draft, or export the outline to PDF
Settlement & exposure
The settlement math, done for you
Track damages by category, log every demand and offer, and watch total exposure against policy limits — with a red warning the moment the worst-case verdict blows through the coverage.
- Damages by category with economic, non-economic, and punitive totals
- Demand / offer / counteroffer log with CCP §998 statutory-offer flags
- Policy-limits tracking with an automatic excess-exposure warning
- Best / likely / worst verdict modeling in one place
Case memory
Never lose a case insight again
A structured journal for every matter — case theories, risks, open questions, even smoking-gun flags — that also grounds the AI. When the assistant reads your documents, its proposed entries land in a review queue you accept or reject.
- Taggable, pinnable entries across 11 types, from insight to smoking gun
- AI-proposed entries you accept or reject — nothing files itself
- Critical flags and pins keep the load-bearing facts on top
- The same memory the assistant reads for case-aware answers
The business side, handled
Trust accounting, time, billing, and firm intelligence — 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 & firm BI
From time entry to LEDES — and the numbers behind the firm
Track time on the matter, bill it, report it, and see how the practice is actually doing — including the formats insurance carriers demand.
- Case status reports with parties, deadlines, and financials in one document
- LEDES 1998B export for insurance-defense billing; Stripe payment links and QuickBooks sync on your own accounts
- Rate cards and automated recurring invoices
- Firm analytics — WIP, AR aging, realization, utilization, matter profitability, lead pipeline
And the rest of the iceberg
One application for the whole practice — not a bundle of subscriptions.
Each a purpose-built data model — ~180 specialized fields on a typical area — not a generic custom-fields box.
DUI sentencing exposure, Lemon Law restitution, and present-value damages with a low/high settlement range.
Statutes, case law, court rules, jury instructions — verified against official sources, with staleness flagging.
A structured multi-clock SOL model that flags when a typed date disagrees with the computed governing date.
3,100+ trial courts (all 50 states + DC). Assign one to a matter and its docket search, local rules, remote-appearance, and website links are one click off the case — tentatives where the court publishes them, e-filing and forms for federal.
Know-your-judge intelligence: tentative-ruling system, preferred motion format, courtroom rules, clerk contacts.
Every outstanding request across all your matters in one view, flagged overdue or coming due.
WIP, A/R aging, realization and utilization rates, matter profitability, and a revenue trend.
Recognizes opposing counsel, clients, and adjusters and flags mail you haven't answered past its business-hours response window.
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.
Discovery, experts, witnesses, exhibits, and PACER RSS docket sync — organized per matter.
Bring in files, .eml/.msg email, or whole folders — OCR'd and auto-sorted into the right document type by filename, content, and source folder.
Multi-user roles with per-case read/write/admin permissions, plus two-factor authentication.
SQLCipher database encryption with a 20-word recovery phrase and OS-keystore auto-unlock.
Capture a note by voice and have it transcribed against the matter.
⌘K spotlight across cases, contacts, documents, deadlines — plus full-text search of the whole practice.
Duplicate detection, cross-case linking, and counsel-of-record tracking by side with substitution history.
Optional OneDrive/Google Drive/Dropbox/Box sync — on your accounts, off by default.
Automatic local backups of the encrypted database, on your schedule.
180+ tools so AI assistants can work your matters under a read-first permission gate.
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.
Not your typical case manager
The same feature list every vendor prints — and the line that actually separates them.
Cloud case managers
Clio · MyCase · PracticePanther · the rest
- Your privileged files live on the vendor's servers
- Per-seat pricing, with AI features as a paid upcharge
- Generic custom fields you configure yourself, per area
- A calendar you populate by hand
- Evidence integrity is your problem to solve elsewhere
- A breach or subpoena reaches your whole practice at once
CaseDesk
Local-first · built by an attorney
- Your files never leave your machine — encrypted, keyed to your OS
- Free during beta, bring your own keys, no per-seat AI tax
- 106 practice areas with specialized fields and calculators, ready out of the box
- 4,700+ verified deadline rules that compute and cite their authority
- Bitcoin-anchored chain of custody, built into the case file
- No central target — there are no servers of ours to breach
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 OS credential store, with a 20-word recovery phrase.
- No telemetry, no analytics, no phone-home. The app has nothing to report to and nowhere to report it.
- Bitcoin-anchored evidence gives you tamper-evident timestamps you can defend in court.
- Team roles & per-case permissions plus two-factor auth — ethical-wall screening within the firm.
- Default-deny client portal. Work product is invisible to clients unless you individually mark it visible.
- 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
Are the 106 practice areas really specialized, or just labels?
Really specialized. Each area is its own purpose-built data model — a typical one has around 180 distinct fields organized into area-specific sections, and several go further with built-in calculators (California DUI sentencing exposure, Song-Beverly Lemon Law restitution, present-value damages). A workers' comp matter tracks WCAB numbers and whole-person impairment; an immigration matter tracks A-Numbers and the asylum one-year clock; a class action walks Rule 23 element by element. It's the opposite of a generic custom-fields box.
What is Bitcoin-anchored evidence, in plain terms?
CaseDesk takes a cryptographic fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash) of a document and records it to the Bitcoin blockchain through OpenTimestamps. Because the blockchain is public and immutable, that fingerprint becomes proof the document existed in exactly that form at that time — no one can backdate or alter it after the fact. When you need it, CaseDesk generates a declaration and certificate of authenticity you can attach to a filing. The document itself never leaves your machine; only the anonymous hash is published.
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.
Can the AI really run without sending my data anywhere?
Yes. CaseDesk can run a legal-grade open model entirely on your own GPU — nothing leaves the building. If you'd rather use a cloud model, you connect your own Anthropic or OpenAI key and it talks to that provider directly from your machine, under your terms. Either way there's no per-seat AI markup, because the model relationship is yours, not ours.
Can I rely on the deadline and exposure calculations?
They're aids to a licensed attorney's judgment, not a substitute for it. Deadline rules are verified against official sources and cite their authority; where a rule reflects best practice rather than a pinned statute, it's labeled an estimate, and sentencing/exposure calculators tell you to verify against the current statute before advising. Always confirm against official sources before relying on any date or figure.
What platforms does it run on, and what happens after beta?
Windows today, during the free beta — email us about your setup, since platform support is shaped by what beta attorneys run. Commercial terms will be announced before the beta ends; nothing changes retroactively for your data, which is on your machine either way.
The greatest software isn't the biggest server. It's yours.
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