We ship something most days, and most of it goes out quietly. Unless you went looking, you’d never know your timesheet stopped going blank, or that invoice PDFs stopped spilling onto an extra page. So from today I’m going to write here every Friday and tell you what changed. We’re calling it Lawtelligence.
I’m a week late starting, so this first issue covers two weeks, 5 to 16 October. It was the biggest fortnight we’ve had. Pour something warm; this one’s long.
What’s new in ModulawAI, every Friday.
A clerk for every matter
If you try one thing this week, try this. Open a matter and click once, and it gets its own AI employee. We’ve called it the Clerk. The Clerk keeps a brief of the matter and updates it when something happens on the file: a payment lands, a hearing moves, the client writes in. When you open the matter on Monday, the Clerk has already caught up.
The Clerk is one of a set. You can now switch on AI employees that react to what happens in your firm, as it happens. The Cashier watches invoices that get paid or go overdue. The Call Scribe picks up when a call ends. Hearing Prep, Portal Concierge and Inbox Triage do what their names say.
Then there’s the suggested timesheet. You did the work, so you shouldn’t have to rebuild it from memory at six on a Friday. ModulawAI lists what you drafted, who you called, which meetings you sat in and which emails you sent on each matter, and leaves out what you’ve logged. It costs no credits, because no AI model is involved.
Email that drafts its own reply
When a client emails about a matter, the person handling it now gets a task with a reply already written from the case file. You read it, change what you want, and click Approve and send. It goes from your own mailbox. Nothing leaves without a person approving it, and I’d keep it that way.
Every email in your inbox, and on a matter’s Comms tab, also gets a short summary, a guess at which matter it belongs to, and one tap to turn it into a task, a diary entry, a time entry or a note.
For those of you who build workflows: you can now add a condition, a step that waits for someone to approve, or a step that hands work to a named AI employee. Each workflow has an Activity tab, and you can run, check or pause one from chat.
That spreadsheet opens now
Someone sends you an Excel file, a PowerPoint deck, a forwarded .eml, a CSV. Until this week you had to download it. Now it opens in ModulawAI, and you can leave a comment on a cell or a range, a slide, a few words in a text file, or a line of code. A zip opens like a folder, so you can pull out the two files you need and leave the rest. All of it renders on our own servers.
Recordings got the same treatment. Play a video or audio file and the transcript runs underneath, with the line being spoken highlighted. Click a line to jump there, or comment on a moment. Ask AI to review the recording and it marks the admissions, contradictions, dates, sums and follow-ups at the second someone said them. If you take witness interviews, I think you’ll use this a lot.
Hand it the 200-page agreement
AI review now reads a draft, a PDF or a Word document of any length. It works through the document in parts and writes its issues onto the page as it goes, so you can start reading before it finishes. A card in the chat shows how far it has got and the top risks so far, and the document opens beside the chat when it’s done. The Word add-in uses the same engine, so long documents work there too, and a dropped connection no longer signs you out.
The draft editor also keeps your Word formatting now: indents, spacing, fonts, colours, numbering, merged table cells, headers, footers, footnotes and margins. There’s a ruler for dragging indents and margins. And Tab types a tab, the way Word does. If the editor ever swallowed your Tab key and threw you out of the document, I’m sorry.
Two smaller document changes. You can link a folder from your own OneDrive, SharePoint or Google Drive into your Personal files, and ModulawAI keeps it current while the files stay in your drive. Firms can link SharePoint libraries into the Library or a matter. And you can finally rename any folder, from any menu.
Contracts, start to signature
Start a contract from a template, draft it in the editor, send it for approval inside the firm, and send it out for signature with built-in e-signature. Nobody prints a page. The executed copy and its key dates stay on the contract, you can amend a signed contract, and clause review checks the terms against your clause library.
Has this been paid for?
A firm asked us that about a contract, and the document couldn’t answer. Now it can. Open a draft, contract or file and you’ll see whether the work on it has been invoiced and paid, amendments included. You can log time from the document and link invoice lines to it.
If your clients deduct withholding tax at source, you can record the rate, the amount that reached your bank and the credit note number on the payment. A live check tells you whether cash and tax add up to the invoice, and the receipt shows the split. Admins can also correct a payment that was recorded by hand. They have to give a reason, and we keep a record of every change.
Paid case invoices now send a receipt instead of the invoice again. Invoice PDFs lay out properly. And invoices and expenses follow your firm’s document numbering.
Forgot to press record?
Switch on automatic transcription, for the whole firm or for one meeting, and scheduled meetings get captured even when nobody presses record. Guests you send notes to now get a meeting page with the notes and transcript. They see the recording only if you choose to share it.
A few team things. Team Chat has voice notes (the mic sits beside Send) and shows everyone’s profile photo. Members show who they report to. Admins can let members start a process for themselves from My Tasks, a training request for example. And there’s the Floor, an optional live view of the firm: who’s working where, their workload and today’s activity. It stays off until an owner or admin turns it on, and everyone gets told when they do.
Research and chat
- Case-law sources in an answer now show how many judgments in our library cite them, and the most recent year. Hover for what the number counts.
- You can see what the assistant remembers about you under Settings, search it, and make it forget one thing or everything. You can also switch long-term memory off.
- The assistant reads the documents you attach before it answers, and it only cites authorities its research returned. We caught it inventing a citation in testing, and we fixed the cause.
- When it needs to know which matter or document you mean, it shows your real matters and lets you search or browse your files and connected drives.
- A shared chat opens the way its creator sees it, with drafts, sources and case cards intact.
- If your firm says “matter” or “file” instead of “case”, the assistant, notifications, PDFs, emails and reports now say it too.
Pick a theme
Settings, Appearance has six designs now, each with light and dark. Firms can set a default for everyone and a separate one for the client portal. The app moves more naturally too: selections glide, and menus grow from where you clicked. Pick one and tell me which.
If a client asks about data
Send them to our Trust Center, which went live this week. They can request our security documents and read them in a private portal. The short answer to most questions: the AI providers we use don’t keep what you send them, and we mask personal data in our own logs.
Behind that, we finished our ISO 27001 documentation, and automated compliance checks now run against our live systems every day. We also ran a full review of our security, line by line, and fixed what it turned up. Changing your password now signs you out everywhere else.
The small stuff
- Your clients’ portal timeline reads in plain words now, and your drafts stay with the firm.
- We tell you when someone adds credits to your account.
- A notification opens the exact record it’s about.
- We file email to a matter by its thread, and the case team hears about it.
- Read and confirm forms can search the whole Library and add whole folders.
- Share-link PDFs stopped showing blank half pages.
- Dialogs stopped sliding away when you tick a box. That was the timesheet “going blank”.
That’s the fortnight. Everything here is live or rolling out this week at app.modulaw.ai.
If something in ModulawAI annoys you, reply to the newsletter or message us from inside the app. Those messages come to me, and they decide what we fix next. See you next Friday.
Abiola
Founder, ModulawAI