This issue covers 6 to 13 November, weekend included. Most of the week went on the first few days of a client relationship: the enquiry, the consultation fee, the engagement letter and the first invoice.
The rest is money again, plus some help for whoever is holding the fort while a colleague is away.
What’s new in ModulawAI, every Friday.
From first enquiry to an open case
This is the one I’d try first. A firm asked us to take a client from “I need a lawyer” to an open case without a dozen emails in between. You can now do it from one link.
Share an intake form and switch on Starts client onboarding. The prospect fills it in and becomes a lead. They pay the consultation fee, then pick their own time from your calendar. Nothing is confirmed and no invite goes out until the fee is paid, and they’re never charged twice. If they pay by mobile money, the time is held while your team confirms the payment.
Hold the consultation on a ModulawAI call and it’s ticked off by itself once you’ve both joined. The lead becomes a case, and the call notes are filed to it. The engagement letter is drafted from your own template, and someone at the firm checks and signs it off before it goes out for signature. Once it’s signed, the invoice is raised and sent.
The whole thing is one process, starting from Client onboarding: booking to case. Each step either waits for the client (fee paid, time booked, letter signed, invoice paid) or does the work for you. You can also assign a step to the client’s lawyer, whoever that turns out to be. Booking types can carry a fee, firm-wide or per lawyer, and the firm can set a minimum.
Every payment lands on an invoice
When we ran this end to end, a paid consultation fee sat on the account with no invoice and no receipt. Now every payment ends up on an invoice with a receipt, even before there’s a case, and the invoice follows the person from lead to client to case, keeping its number.
Each client now has one money view: invoices, payments with receipts, credit notes and refunds on one timeline, with totals per currency. It replaces the old Billing tab on the client file.
When you raise an invoice, any money the client has already paid (a consultation fee, say) is offered as credit. Nothing is applied until you tick it.
More ways to get paid
You can now connect your own Flutterwave account, so clients pay by card, bank transfer or mobile money on Flutterwave’s page. MTN MoMo works too: the client gets a prompt on their phone and approves it. MTN runs MoMo country by country, so you can connect an account for each country you collect in.
If you’ve switched on more than one provider for a currency, clients now choose. The invoice page asks “How do you want to pay?” and shows each one. The consultation fee page does the same. After paying online, clients land back on the invoice with their confirmation, and the receipt names the provider that took the money.
Settings, Financials is simpler as well. Step one: connect your providers, one short row each. Step two: tick which ones clients can use for each currency.
As before, the money goes to your account and we never hold it. Your payment keys can only be used to take payments. If your provider tells us money has left your account, everyone who manages payments at the firm gets an email. We never make transfers, so if nobody at the firm made it, you’ll know to look.
Somebody has to pay while you’re away
A firm’s head of finance was going on leave, and their payments and approvals would have waited until they came back. Now, when you request leave and name a handover colleague, you get two ticks: they can record your requisition payments, and they can act on your approvals. Both are off unless you tick them, and you can change your mind until the leave ends.
The colleague sees your waiting approvals marked “Covering for” you. They can’t approve or pay their own requests. Every change goes in the audit log, and you both get it in writing. The leave cover guide has the steps.
Ask ModulawAI catches up with chat
The Ask ModulawAI panel on a case used to look as if nothing was happening when you asked it to draft. It now works like the main chat: it shows what it’s doing, opens its drafts in the editor over the case, and suggests follow-ups and sources. Press Back and the conversation is still there.
You can also drop a file anywhere on the chat window (or on the case page while the panel is open), or paste a screenshot, and it attaches.
Your AI employees ask before they publish
If an AI employee runs on a schedule with a tool you’ve connected (your website, say), it can no longer publish, send or delete on its own. Those actions wait as an Approval for the employee’s owner. Everything else in the run carries on, so the drafts are ready when you look.
When a source can’t be searched, it says so
Some case law sites block automated searches. The assistant used to read that as “no cases found”, which on a legal question is the wrong answer. Now it tells you which source it couldn’t reach and where to search it yourself. EU judgments in the Library also show the parties’ names instead of “Judgment of the Court (Seventh Chamber)”.
Change the email you sign in with
You can now change your sign-in email from Profile. We send a code to the new address, and nothing changes until it comes back. Your other sessions sign out, and both addresses get a note. Along the way we reviewed how accounts and permissions are checked, and fixed what it turned up.
The small stuff
- The AI can now suggest changes and leave comments on words that run over two lines, like a letter’s address block.
- Requisition PDFs print the date retired, and the status watermark is bigger and easier to read.
- Files save under their real names everywhere: chat, the Library, the client portal, team chat, case documents, notes and receipts.
- Vendors, bills, purchase orders, invoices and reports use your firm’s currency, and dates follow your firm’s date format.
- Clicking the case that’s already open no longer blanks its details.
- Client portal settings save again, and Liberia saves as a workspace country.
- A document can’t be saved without its file any more, and a missing file says so.
- A workflow started on a case works only with that case’s documents. Firm precedents found by name still work.
- A filing you place outside Nigeria no longer gets asked about Nigerian courts.
- In the newer design, the profile and Settings popup opens at full size.
That’s the week. Everything above is live at app.modulaw.ai.
If you try client onboarding, tell me where it trips you up. Reply to the newsletter or message us from inside the app. Those messages come to me. See you next Friday.
Abiola
Founder, ModulawAI