AI assistant

An AI that understands your practice,
not just the law.

The MatterFirst AI assistant answering a firm-wide question with a table of seven purchase matters and their workflow steps

MatterFirst's assistant is context-aware, matter-connected and human-controlled. It drafts, suggests and answers, and it acts only when your team approves.

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Encrypted at rest and in transit Australian data residency Hosted on AWS No lock-in contracts Guided setup available Your data exportable on request

Last reviewed

What can an AI assistant do inside practice management software?

Answer questions about a specific matter using its documents and history, draft correspondence from that context, and suggest the next step in the workflow. In MatterFirst it reads only your workspace, runs in your chosen AWS region, and cannot send or file anything without a person approving it.

Context-aware chat

An assistant that actually knows your matters

MatterFirst's AI assistant sees your matter data, documents, tasks and timeline. Ask it questions and get answers grounded in your actual work, not generic legal advice.

  • Ask about matter status, deadlines and outstanding tasks
  • Query across all matters: “Which settlements are next week?”
  • Follow-up questions with conversation memory
  • Answers about matter facts name the record they came from

Capability 1 of 4

Answers grounded in your matters, not the internet.

Draft & suggest

Draft emails, notes and summaries in seconds

The assistant drafts client emails, internal notes and matter summaries using context from the matter. Review, edit, send, with full control at every step.

  • Draft client update emails with matter-specific context
  • Generate matter summaries for team handovers
  • Suggest next steps based on workflow stage
  • Create task lists from meeting notes or instructions

Capability 2 of 4

First drafts in seconds, ready for your review.

Human control

AI suggests. Humans decide. Always.

Every AI action is a suggestion, nothing executes without approval. Sent emails are reviewed first. Created tasks are drafted first. Your team stays in control.

  • All AI outputs require human approval before execution
  • Confidence recorded against an extraction where the model returned one
  • Every suggested action recorded with who approved it and when
  • Configurable AI tool permissions per role

Capability 3 of 4

Nothing executes without your approval.

Example workflows

See what the assistant can do, in practice

From onboarding new matters to preparing settlement checklists, the AI assistant handles routine knowledge work so your team can focus on judgement calls.

  • “Summarise this contract and flag unusual terms”
  • “Draft a settlement reminder email for next week's matters”
  • “What tasks are overdue across my active conveyancing files?”
  • “Create a checklist from this special conditions clause”

Capability 4 of 4

Routine knowledge work, handled.

MatterFirst is a legal practice management platform for Australian law firms, built by NorthCape Technology, covering matters, documents, trust accounting, billing and a client portal, with data hosted in the AWS region the firm chooses.

This suits a firm that spends real time reconstructing where a matter got to, and practice managers answering the same status questions repeatedly. It is not a legal research tool and it does not give advice, it works from what is on your file, not from case law, and a firm looking for research or advice should be looking at a different category of product.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Can it act on a matter by itself?
No. It drafts, suggests and answers, and every action that changes something or leaves the firm needs a person to approve it. That is a deliberate design decision rather than a limitation we intend to remove.
Does it give legal advice?
No, and it should not be used that way. It answers questions about your own matter from your own documents. It is not trained on case law and it is not a research tool.
Can it see matters a user is not allowed to see?
It is scoped to your firm, and which tools it may run at all is set per role, so a read-only user cannot make it change anything. One gap to know about: an ethical wall placed on a matter is enforced when a person browses the app, but is not yet applied to assistant queries, so do not rely on the assistant to hold a wall. Privileged documents stay out of the client portal regardless.
Where is my data stored?
In the AWS region your firm chooses. Sydney (ap-southeast-2) is the default for Australian firms. Matter data, documents, extraction and matter questions all stay in that region. The one exception is the first step of Document AI, reading the document itself, which runs on Azure AI Document Intelligence in Azure's Australia East region. Both regions are in Australia.
How much does MatterFirst cost?
Pricing is per workspace rather than per seat, starting at $199 per month for Solo. Each plan includes a set number of users, a monthly AI balance in Australian dollars, the client portal and automations. Extra users are billed only past the included seats. Full plan inclusions are on the pricing page.
Can I get my data out if I leave?
Yes. Your matters, contacts, documents and time records are exportable on request, and there is no lock-in contract. We would rather you were able to leave and chose not to.
Is there a free trial?
Yes, a 14 day guided trial on Solo, Practice or Firm. It is guided rather than self-serve because a practice management system tells you very little until it has your real matters in it, and we would rather help you load them than leave you looking at an empty workspace.
Who builds MatterFirst?
NorthCape Technology, a Melbourne-based software company. MatterFirst is built in Australia for Australian legal practice, which is why trust accounting and Xero are first-class rather than regional add-ons, and why PEXA and InfoTrack are on the roadmap rather than absent from it.
Is MatterFirst suitable for a firm of my size?
It is designed for solo practitioners up to firms of roughly twenty seats. Below that, Solo carries the full platform for one user. Above it, the platform works but you should expect to talk to us about migration and rollout rather than signing up online.

Reviewed by Nick Hallam

Co-founder and Operations Director, NorthCape Technology

Aerospace engineer by background, and the one who talks to firms about how they actually run. Reviews the pages that describe how a practice works day to day.

Last reviewed

Ready to add AI to your practice?

Book a demo and put questions to the assistant against your own matter data, which is the only way to judge whether it fits how you work.

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