MatterFirst vs LawMaster

Moving off LawMaster?
Here are your options.

Australian platform acquired by Actionstep in 2022, now being wound down with no announced end date.

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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

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What should a LawMaster firm migrate to?

LawMaster is being wound down by Actionstep with no announced end date, so firms should plan a move on their own timeline rather than wait for one to be set. Actionstep is the default path; LEAP, Clio, Smokeball and MatterFirst are the alternatives. MatterFirst is Australian-built with per-workspace pricing and onshore AI processing.

LawMaster is being retired

Actionstep acquired LawMaster in 2022 and is winding it down. No end date has been announced publicly, which is a harder planning problem than a fixed deadline rather than an easier one: there is no date to work back from, and the decision about when you move is currently someone else's to make.

Whatever you choose, start early. Migration capacity is finite across every vendor, and it is being used up by every other firm in the same position. We would rather you moved somewhere good than somewhere fast, and that is true even if it is not to us.

Source: https://www.lawsupport.com.au/resources/legal-practice-management-software-australia.html

The MatterFirst workflow builder, showing stages, steps and their conditions on a canvas
The workflow builder, which is the thing most of this page is really about. A practice manager builds and changes this directly, and every change is versioned.
MatterFirst and LawMaster, side by side
MatterFirst LawMaster
Origin Australia (NorthCape Technology, Melbourne) Australia
Status Active Being retired, no announced date
Pricing Per workspace from $199/month, users included Not applicable: the platform is being retired.
Data residency Your chosen AWS region, including AI inference Not published. Ask the vendor where inference runs, not only where files are stored.
Client portal Included on every plan, no per-client charge Not published
AI document extraction Included, with a monthly AI balance on every paid plan Not published
Contract term No lock-in Not published

LawMaster details are drawn from the source linked at the foot of this page and were checked on 29 July 2026. Where we have not verified something, this page says so rather than estimating. On pricing: ours is published, per workspace rather than per seat, and is the list price with users included. A competitor's price appears here only where they publish it themselves, on the basis they publish it, and never as our estimate of what you would pay.

What LawMaster is good at

  • Established product with a long-standing base of Australian firms

Things to weigh

  • Being wound down. No public deadline has been announced, which is its own planning problem
  • Not recommended for new implementations

Which one should you pick

Best fit, stated plainly.

We sell one of these, so weigh this accordingly. It is still the honest read, and if your situation is in the right-hand column we would rather you knew.

Choose MatterFirst when

  • You are small or mid-size and want to choose your own timeline while you still can
  • You want the extraction audit and vendor questions first. See /migrate/lawmaster

Choose LawMaster when

For a firm choosing today, there is no case for starting on LawMaster. It is being retired. If you are already on it, the question is what you move to and when, not whether.

Australian questions worth settling before you choose
MatterFirst What to ask LawMaster
Trust accounting Built for Australian practice: per-matter ledgers, receipting, reconciliation, and a compliance review workflow covering New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. Your external sign-off is recorded against the jurisdiction, and obtaining it remains your firm's responsibility. Ask which Australian jurisdictions the trust module was built for, and whether it is local or adapted from another country's rules.
Trust ledger history on migration The importer handles trust transactions, so your ledger history comes across with the rest of the migration. Ask what format LawMaster exports trust history in. You need it for the seven-year retention period under s147 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law regardless of where you move.
PEXA Connected to your firm's PEXA account so settlement dates and workspace details land against the matter. Set up with us rather than self-serve. Not published. Ask whether PEXA is native, provided through a partner, or absent.
Xero Invoices go out to Xero and payments come back, so the ledger and the matter agree without rekeying. Not published. Ask whether the accounting integration writes back or only exports.
GST Line amounts are GST-exclusive and GST is calculated on the taxable subtotal at your organisation's rate, which is standard Australian practice. Not published. Ask to see a sample invoice with mixed taxable and non-taxable disbursements.
Data and AI location The AWS region your firm chooses, Sydney by default. Document extraction and matter questions are processed in that same region. Not published. Ask where inference runs, not only where files are stored. The two answers are frequently different regions.
Support The people answering are in Victoria. We do not publish a support SLA, and we would rather say that than imply one. Ask which timezone support runs in, and what the escalation path is outside those hours.

The right-hand column is questions rather than answers on purpose. We have not verified how LawMaster handles Australian trust rules, PEXA or GST, and inventing an answer for them is the mistake that put false claims on this page before. Ask all three of your shortlisted vendors and compare what comes back.

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.

If you are migrating, MatterFirst suits Australian firms up to about twenty seats that want document extraction and automation at the centre of the file. It is the weaker choice if you need the largest integration ecosystem, which is Clio, or a decades-deep precedent library, which is LEAP, or if the least disruptive path genuinely matters more than the destination, in which case Actionstep is where your data is already headed.

Evaluation checklist

Take this to every vendor, including us

The questions worth asking any Australian practice management vendor, including the ones we answer badly. No form, no email required: read it here or download the markdown and put it in front of every platform on your shortlist.

Read the checklist Download it

Reviewed by Liam Killingback

Co-founder and Technical Director, NorthCape Technology

Builds the MatterFirst platform. Engineer rather than lawyer, which is why the pages he reviews cite sources instead of asserting legal positions.

Last reviewed

How we check this

  • Every claim about another platform comes from that platform's own public documentation or pricing page, linked from the page it appears on.
  • Where a vendor does not publish something, the page says 'not published' rather than estimating it. A guess that reads as a fact is the failure mode this rule exists to prevent.
  • Every page carries the date its competitor facts were last checked, so you can see how fresh they are rather than assuming.
  • We sell one of the products being compared. Every page says so, and every page states the cases where the competitor is the better choice.
  • If you find something here that is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it and re-date the page.

FAQ

Questions firms ask

Do I have to move off LawMaster?
Actionstep acquired LawMaster in 2022 and is winding it down. No end date has been announced publicly, which is a harder planning problem than a fixed deadline rather than an easier one: there is no date to work back from, and the decision about when you move is currently someone else's to make.
Can MatterFirst migrate my LawMaster data?
We offer a Migration Package covering matters, contacts, documents and templates, scoped per firm against your actual data volume. Talk to us early: the closer you get to a sunset date, the less room there is for anything to go wrong, and that is true whichever platform you pick.
Is Actionstep the safest choice, since it owns LawMaster?
It is the path of least resistance, which is a real advantage: your data is already going there and the migration is their project. Whether it is the best fit is a separate question, and worth asking now, because migrating is the one moment when switching costs are already sunk. Actionstep's strength is deep workflow configurability; its cost is that setup is a project and stays one.
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.

Leaving LawMaster?

14 day guided trial with your own matters, and a migration conversation if you need one.

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