Last month, I wrote here about XIRA, a new lawyer-matching website whose goal is not only to make it easier for clients to find lawyers, but also to make legal services more affordable by providing attorneys with free practice management software.

Now XIRA is taking that free software a step further, with the launch of GAVEL, a free, cloud-based platform that provides an integrated set of software tools for managing a solo or small law practice.

“We are breaking the paid subscription models, reducing solo practitioners’ operating costs and expanding the addressable legal marketplace,” said Reza Ghaffari, founder and CEO of XIRA.

“Attorneys currently monetize a fraction of the time they spend in their practice. Our free GAVEL solution aims to drastically improve billable time while reducing or eliminating overhead.”

There is no cost or obligation for attorneys to use the GAVEL platform, other than signing up. It includes:

  • Case management.
  • Online billing.
  • Online scheduling.
  • Video conferencing.
  • Secure messaging.
  • Document management.

As I noted in my earlier post, attorneys may use this platform without obligation to accept clients through XIRA’s front-end lawyer-matching site. If they do accept a new booking and hold a consultation with the potential client, they then pay a fee of $30.

Lawyers manage their cases and consultations through a dashboard.

But attorneys may use it for all of their own cases, including current and new cases, including its features for online scheduling and video conferencing.

As I also noted previously, two paid upgrades to the free platform are available. The platform comes with 2Gb of document storage at no charge. An attorney can opt to increase that to 100Gb for an addition $10 a month.

Another option that is currently free but will later incur a charge is accepting electronic payments. Ghaffari said that will remain free through the first quarter of 2021, but thereafter will cost $10 a month.

Although XIRA describes GAVEL as a platform for solo and small-firm attorneys, it is at this point in its developed most suitable for attorneys working solo, in that there is no ability to share a single account among several attorneys within the same firm or to share calendars, tasks or documents.

Expanding GAVEL into a multi-user platform is something Ghaffari plans to do at some point, he told me yesterday, but he has not yet set a target for when that might happen.

That said, there is nothing to stop multiple attorneys with a single firm from each using it individually, if they wish.

If you are a solo looking for a basic practice management platform, you should check out XIRA. One thing for certain, you can’t beat the price.

[Disclosure: XIRA is a sponsor of my LawNext podcast.]

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.