Live matters only
Do not start with the archive. Add the matters that have a future date. Everything else can come later, or never — a closed matter in a spreadsheet is not costing you anything.
You already know the next tarikh. What you do not have at hand is what was ordered last time, when the limitation on the connected appeal runs out, which authority supports the reply you promised, and whether that client has paid since March. Four different places, four different times of night.
Case management software for an Indian advocate should hold the matter, the client, the hearing diary, the tasks and the money. Lawgger holds all five, and adds the two things diary apps do not: court listings with plain-words order digests, and research with a good-law verdict on every authority — for Rs 1,999 a month.
A feature list is only useful if you can see whose hands it is in. In a one-person chamber, read the third column as "you".
| Part | What it does | Who uses it in a chamber |
|---|---|---|
| Matters | One record per case: parties, court, case number, stage, connected matters, documents, notes | Everyone. It is the spine the rest hangs off |
| Clients | Who instructed you, on which matters, with contact details and the fee arrangement | Senior and accounts |
| Hearing diary | Listing alerts, the day's board, the order digest and the next date against the matter | Clerk and arguing counsel |
| Tasks on a kanban | Reply to draft, vakalatnama to file, affidavit to swear — moved across columns as they clear | Junior and clerk |
| Limitation clocks | 21 statutory periods, rolled past weekends, holidays and court vacations, with section 5 flags | Senior, reviewed weekly |
| Live billing timer | Time recorded against the matter as the work happens, not reconstructed at month end | Every fee-earner |
| GST invoices | Invoices raised from recorded time, with the fields a chamber needs | Accounts, or the senior |
| Razorpay payments | A payment link goes with the invoice; receipts land against the matter | Accounts and client |
| Approval workflows | Nothing goes out under a senior's name until the senior releases it | Senior gates, junior submits |
| Team chat | Discussion attached to the matter, not lost in a personal message thread | Whole chamber |
| WhatsApp updates | Listing alerts and order digests on the number you already read between hearings | Counsel and clerk |
| Document vault | Private per-chamber storage, with OCR, stamping, compression and conversion | Clerk, filed by matter |
A fair question, asked by every advocate paying a few hundred rupees a month and not obviously suffering.
Diary apps for advocates do one job and often do it well: they remember dates and remind you. They are cheap for a reason — remembering a date is a small problem, and it is the only one they solve. The honest case for upgrading is not that they are bad software. It is that a hearing date, by itself, is a quarter of the information you need on the morning of that hearing.
| The morning of a hearing, you need | A diary app | Lawgger |
|---|---|---|
| The date itself | Yes | Yes |
| Confirmation it is actually listed today, and at what serial | You check the court yourself | Matched against the day's cause list |
| Where the board has reached, from the corridor | No | Live boards, SC, 25 High Courts, NCLT, NCLAT, CAT |
| What was ordered last time, in plain words | Whatever you typed in | Order digest against the matter |
| Whether a limitation period is running behind it | No | 21 statutory clocks with vacation rolling |
| The authority for the point you will argue | No | Pin-cited, with a good-law verdict |
| What is billed and what is unpaid on this matter | Rarely | Timer, GST invoice, Razorpay collection |
| Typical price | Roughly Rs 99 to Rs 1,000 a month | Rs 1,999 a month, or Rs 19,999 a year |
The price band in the last row is an indicative range for advocate diary apps sold in India, noted in July 2026. Vendors change prices; check with them before relying on it. The comparison that matters more is not against a diary app at all — it is against a diary app plus a research subscription, which is what most chambers actually pay for. That arithmetic is on what legal research costs in India.
In most chambers a date arrives by rumour. The clerk hears it, or a colleague mentions the matter is listed, or you find out at 10.25 am. Here the sequence is fixed, and each stage produces something a person can act on.
It appears on a list. Your matters are matched against published cause lists across 527 courts and 426 benches, and roughly 700 district courts, so you learn the matter is listed the evening before rather than the morning of. Cause list by advocate explains the matching. The board moves. From about 10.30 am to 4.30 pm, the live display boards show where the court has reached, which is the difference between waiting three hours in a corridor and arriving twenty minutes before your item.
An order is passed. It comes back as a digest in plain words — interim stay granted, counter due in four weeks, next date fixed — against the matter, in case tracking. The digest becomes a deadline. "Counter due in four weeks" is a task on the kanban with a date; where a statutory period is engaged, the limitation calculator works out the real last day, rolling it past a court vacation rather than letting it land on a closed court. The deadline becomes a draft. The task opens into the relevant format from the format library. Five stages, one record, nobody re-typing anything.
Chambers do not lose fees to bad rates. They lose them to reconstruction — sitting down on the 30th and trying to remember how long a conference ran on the 8th. Anything reconstructed is guessed, and advocates guess downward.
The timer runs against the matter while the work happens, from a phone or a laptop, so a two-hour conference is two hours in the record by the time it ends. At month end the time is already allocated: this matter, this client, this fee-earner. The invoice is raised from it as a GST invoice with the fields a chamber actually needs — your GSTIN and the client's, place of supply, an HSN or SAC code for legal services, invoice number and date, and the taxable value and tax broken out — and a Razorpay payment link goes with it so a client can pay from a phone instead of promising a cheque next week. Receipts record against the matter, so billed and collected are visible side by side rather than in two files. The full picture is on practice management.
In this order. Chambers that try to bring everything across on day one usually bring nothing across.
Do not start with the archive. Add the matters that have a future date. Everything else can come later, or never — a closed matter in a spreadsheet is not costing you anything.
The CNR pulls the matter in with its history instead of you re-typing party names and case numbers. If you do not have the CNR to hand, see what a CNR number is and where to find it.
One line per matter. This is the step people skip, and it is the reason billing later feels like archaeology.
Once matters are in, check every clock at once. On most migrations this is where a chamber finds something it had lost track of, which is worth the whole exercise.
Run both in parallel across at least one full listing cycle. If nothing was missed in a fortnight, close the spreadsheet. Do not close it on faith.
If your first question is who can see what, and whether a junior can file without a senior releasing it, that page answers it properly with a roles table and the approval gates. It also has the per-seat arithmetic against enterprise quotes.
If you are the clerk, the researcher and the biller, that page tells you which parts of this product to use and which to leave switched off. Roles and approvals are not your problem; the limitation clock and the unbilled hour are.
It is the software a chamber uses to hold each matter in one place: the parties and client, the court and case number, the hearing diary, the documents, the tasks and the fees. For an Indian litigating practice it should also carry court listings, order digests and limitation deadlines, because those are what actually drive the work.
Judge it on whether dates arrive by themselves. Software that only stores what you type is a diary with a login. Lawgger holds matters, clients, diary, tasks and money, and adds cause lists across 527 courts, order digests, 21 limitation clocks and research with a good-law verdict, at Rs 1,999 a month.
A diary app is enough if your only problem is remembering dates. It is not enough if you also need to know what was ordered on the last date, when the appeal period expires, what authority supports the reply and whether the client has paid. Dates without the order, the deadline and the research are half a workflow.
Yes. Once a matter is added, usually by CNR number, listings are matched against it and you get an alert when it appears on a cause list, a plain-words digest when an order is passed, and the next date recorded against the matter without anyone typing it in. You can still edit anything by hand.
Yes. Time recorded on the billing timer sits against a matter and becomes a GST invoice with the fields a chamber needs, and a Razorpay payment link can be sent with it. Payments are recorded against the matter, so what is billed and what is collected stay visible in the same place.
Yes. A chamber can give a clerk their own login with a role that limits what they can see and do, so they can manage listings, dates and filings without access to fee arrangements. Approval gates mean anything sensitive still needs a senior to release it. Roles are set out on law firm software.
No, and no honest answer is different. Listings, order digests, research and payments all need a connection, and a court complex is exactly where connectivity is worst. What helps in practice is that WhatsApp updates carry the day's listing alerts and order digests to your phone, so the information reaches you even when you are not in the app.
Rs 1,999 a month or Rs 19,999 a year — about Rs 66 a day. Diary-style apps for advocates are commonly sold between roughly Rs 99 and Rs 1,000 a month, and research subscriptions from the established publishers are usually quoted between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh a year. Verify any competitor figure with the vendor.
Fourteen days, full product, no card. Add three or four live matters on day one so that the trial covers at least one real hearing date, because a case management tool can only be judged on how it behaves when a matter is actually listed and an order is actually passed.
Fourteen days, no card. Add your live matters by CNR and let one real hearing date pass through it.