CasePilot — Legal Practice Management CRM for Law Firms

Laravel 12 | PHP 8.3+ | Self-Hosted | One-Time Purchase

Why CasePilot?

Most CRM scripts on the market are built for generic businesses and adapted for law firms as an afterthought. CasePilot was designed from day one exclusively for legal practice — mirroring the actual workflows of attorneys, barristers, and legal assistants. If you run a law firm and you are tired of juggling disconnected billing tools, shared drives, and spreadsheets, CasePilot is the solution built specifically for you.

Core Modules at a Glance

Detailed Feature Breakdown

Case Management

• Create and manage unlimited legal cases with custom case types, courts, and reference numbers
• Unlimited diary entries with timestamps and user attribution for complete case history
• Assign multiple lawyers to a single case with responsibility tracking
• Court date scheduler with automated email reminder notifications
• Case status workflow: Open → Pending → Closed → Cancelled
• Link documents, invoices, and tasks directly to cases for full contextual access
• Priority levels: Low, Normal, High, Urgent
• Export case lists to Excel or print-ready PDF

Client Management

• Unified profiles for individual clients and corporate entities
• Full contact details, relationship notes, and communication history
• Real-time financial summary per client: total invoiced, total paid, total outstanding
• All linked cases, invoices, documents, and services visible in a single client view
• Client status tracking: Active, Inactive, Lead
• Advanced search, filter, and export to Excel

Billing and Finance

• Professional PDF invoices with your firm's branding and logo
• Itemized line items with quantity, unit price, tax rates, and discounts
• Multi-currency invoicing with automatic live exchange rate conversion
• Partial and full payment recording with running balance
• Invoice lifecycle: Draft → Sent → Partially Paid → Paid → Overdue → Cancelled
• Email invoices directly to clients from within the application
• Secure signed share links — clients view invoices without requiring a login
• Case-level expense tracking with profitability analysis per matter

Document Management

• Upload any file type — PDF, Word, Excel, images, ZIP archives
• All files stored in a private server directory — never publicly accessible via URL
• SHA-256 integrity hash generated and stored for every document upon upload
• File versioning with complete revision history — always know what changed and when
• Access levels: Private, Firm-wide, Client-visible
• Time-limited signed sharing links for secure external access without an account
• Document categories and tags for advanced filtering and organization
• Full document activity log tracking all views and downloads with user attribution

Tasks and Calendar

• Create tasks with due dates, priority levels, and assigned team member
• Dual views: sortable list view and monthly calendar view
• All court dates and case events integrated into a unified firm-wide calendar
• Task statuses: Pending, In Progress, Completed, Cancelled
• Automated email reminders sent before due dates via Laravel Scheduler
• Link tasks directly to cases or clients for complete context

Proposals

• Create professional service proposals with itemized pricing and firm branding
• PDF generation and direct email delivery to clients from within the system
• Full status lifecycle: Draft, Sent, Accepted, Rejected
• One-click conversion of any accepted proposal to a live invoice — no re-entry
• Permanent proposal history and audit trail retained

Reporting

• Financial Summary: revenue, payments, and outstanding balance analysis by date range
• Cases Report: filterable by status, type, assigned lawyer, court, and date
• Client Activity Report: top clients by revenue, case volume, and outstanding balance
• Document Report: upload trends and category breakdown over time
• Expense Report: by category, case, and time period
• All reports export to PDF or Excel in one click
• Interactive ApexCharts visualizations with drill-down capability

Administration

• Full settings panel: app name, logo, timezone, date format, and default language
• SMTP email configuration with built-in test-send functionality
• User management — create, edit, deactivate, and assign roles
• One-click database backup with download and restore from admin panel
• Customizable case statuses, case types, and court names
• Currency management with live exchange rate API integration
• Complete audit trail — every data change logged with user and timestamp

Role-Based Access Control

CasePilot uses Spatie Permissions to enforce fine-grained, role-aware data scoping. Every user sees only what they are authorized to see.

Technology Stack

CasePilot is built on proven, enterprise-grade open-source technologies — no proprietary lock-in, no black-box framework.

Server Requirements

Installation — Browser-Based, No Command Line Required

CasePilot ships with a 7-step browser installer. No SSH access, no terminal, no developer knowledge required to get started.

1. Upload all application files to your web server's public directory
2. Create a MySQL database and database user in your hosting control panel
3. Open your website URL in a browser — the installer launches automatically
4. Complete the 7-step wizard: server check, database, site settings, admin account
5. Log in and optionally load the included demo data to explore all features

What Is Included

• Complete Laravel 12 application source code — fully unencrypted
• 49 database migration files — clean, well-structured schema
• Demo data seeder for exploration and testing
• Browser-based 7-step installation wizard
• PDF and Excel export functionality across all modules
• 13 language translation files (Arabic, English, French, Spanish, German, Bengali, Hindi, Chinese, and more)
• Full technical documentation
• User guide with screenshots
• 6 months of post-purchase support via CodeCanyon

13 Languages Supported

Each user can set their own language preference independently. Arabic is fully RTL-supported.

Changelog

Version 1.0 — Initial Release

• Complete client, case, invoice, payment, and document management
• Task manager with calendar view and automated email reminders
• Proposals with full lifecycle tracking and one-click invoice conversion
• Financial, case, client, document, and expense reports with PDF/Excel export
• Multi-currency invoicing with live exchange rate API
• Role-based access control: Admin, Lawyer, Assistant (powered by Spatie Permissions)
• 13-language internationalization with per-user language preference
• SHA-256 document integrity hashing and signed secure share links
• Browser-based 7-step installation wizard — no command line required
• One-click database backup and restore from admin panel

CasePilot — Legal Practice Management CRM  |  Built with Laravel 12  |  Self-Hosted  |  Own It Forever

CasePilot - Feature List

1. Installer / Setup Wizard
- Multi-step AJAX installer (welcome, requirements check, database config with test connection, site config, admin account creation, automated install)
- Installation state persistence across server restarts
- Post-install lock (prevents re-installation)
- Optional demo data seeding

2. Authentication & Authorization
- Login / Logout / Remember Me (Laravel Fortify)
- Change password / Admin password reset
- 3 Roles: Admin, Lawyer, Assistant
- 13 granular permissions (view_dashboard, manage_cases, manage_clients, manage_invoices, manage_payments, manage_expenses, manage_documents, manage_tasks, manage_services, view_reports, export_data, manage_settings, manage_users)
- Role & Permission CRUD with permission matrix editor
- 8 Policy classes with full CRUD authorization (Case, Client, Document, Invoice, Payment, Proposal, Task, Expense)
- Data access scoping (accessibleBy) — Admin sees all, Lawyer sees assigned/created, Assistant sees own only

3. Dashboard
- Key metrics: total cases, active cases, clients, services, pending/overdue invoices
- Date filter (7/15/30/60/90/365 days)
- Financial overview: invoiced, paid, expenses, pending, overdue, net revenue
- 5 ApexCharts: case status donut, 6-month financial trend line, revenue breakdown donut, client distribution donut, case priority donut
- Proposal statistics (total/draft/sent/accepted/rejected + total value)
- Recent activities feed (payments, cases, documents, clients, expenses)
- Recent invoices, upcoming case dates, upcoming tasks

4. Case Management
- Full CRUD with soft deletes
- Auto-generated case numbers
- Fields: title, description, client, category, case type, assigned lawyer, status, priority, court name, judge, opposing party/counsel, filing date, next hearing, estimated/actual completion, case value, retainer, hourly rate, statute of limitations, notes
- 5 Statuses: Open, In Progress, Closed, On Hold, Archived
- 4 Priorities: Urgent, High, Medium, Low
- Search + multi-filter (status, type, priority, category)
- Detail view with activity timeline, diary entries, upcoming dates, statistics
- Case Diary / Time Entries: Billable hours tracking
- Case Important Dates: Hearing/deadline/meeting/filing with reminders
- PDF export with full case details

5. Case Calendar
- Monthly calendar view with events per day
- Filter by case and client
- AJAX event retrieval + CRUD from calendar
- Month/year navigation

6. Case Settings (Admin)
- Case Types CRUD (name, description, color, active/inactive, soft deletes)
- Case Categories CRUD (name, description, color, active/inactive, soft deletes)
- Document Categories CRUD (name, description, color, active/inactive, soft deletes)

7. Client Management
- Full CRUD with soft deletes
- Deletion protection (can't delete with active cases)
- Fields: client code, name, email, identification, phone, full address, DOB, occupation, company, notes, status
- 3 Statuses: Active, Inactive, Archived
- Search + multi-filter (status, city, state, country)
- Sortable columns
- Detail view with related cases, documents, invoices, proposals, statistics

8. Invoice Management
- Full CRUD with soft deletes
- Auto-generated invoice numbers
- Fields: client, case (optional), proposal (optional), dates, line items, subtotal, tax, discount, total, notes
- 6 Statuses: Draft, Sent, Paid, Partial, Overdue, Cancelled
- Line Items: description, quantity, rate, amount, optional catalog service link, billable hours
- Search + multi-filter (status, client, case, date range, amount range)
- Payment recording with partial payment support + auto status update
- PDF generation with client info, line items, payment history
- Multi-currency: Currency code, exchange rate (8 decimal precision), base currency conversion
- Calculated balance due, payment percentage, days until due, overdue detection

9. Proposal Management
- Full CRUD with soft deletes
- Auto-generated proposal numbers (PROP-YEAR-####)
- Workflow: Draft → Sent → Accepted/Rejected → Convert to Invoice / Expired / Converted
- Proposal items with catalog service link + auto-recalculation
- One-click conversion to invoice
- Search + filter (status, client)

10. Payment Management
- Full CRUD
- Fields: invoice, amount, date, method, reference, transaction ID, notes
- 5 Payment Methods: Cash, Check, Credit Card, Bank Transfer, Other
- Search + filter (client, method, date range)
- Statistics: total payments, total amount, this month, pending invoices

11. Expense Management
- Full CRUD
- Fields: title, description, amount, currency, date, category, payment method, reference, status, notes + optional client/case/proposal link
- 14 Categories: Office Supplies, Travel, Legal Fees, Court Fees, Professional Services, Utilities, Rent, Software, Equipment, Printing, Communication, Insurance, Marketing, Other
- 3 Statuses: Pending, Approved, Rejected
- Expense Reports: Totals by status/category/client, monthly trend chart, category pie chart
- Excel export with filtered data
- Dynamic AJAX dropdowns (cases by client, proposals by client)

12. Document Management
- Upload, view, edit, delete with soft deletes
- MIME validation: PDF, images, Office docs, text, archives
- Unique file naming (slug + timestamp)
- SHA-256 hashing for integrity verification
- Document Versioning: Upload new versions, parent-child chain, latest version detection
- 3 Access Levels: Public, Restricted, Confidential
- In-browser preview (PDF, images, text)
- Bulk Operations: Bulk delete, bulk download (ZIP), bulk category update
- Activity tracking: Preview/download actions with user, IP, user agent
- Related documents auto-suggestion
- Search + multi-filter (category, client, case, access level, confidentiality, date range, file type)
- Human-readable file size, contextual file icons, category badges

13. Task Management
- Full CRUD with soft deletes
- Fields: title, description, status, priority, type, assigned to, case/service/client (optional), due date, reminder date, estimated/actual hours, notes
- 4 Statuses: Pending, In Progress, Completed, Cancelled
- 4 Priorities: Low, Medium, High, Urgent
- 6 Types: General, Case Related, Client Related, Court Date, Deadline, Follow Up
- 9 Quick Filters: My Tasks, Overdue, Due Today, Due This Week, Urgent, High Priority, Pending, In Progress, Completed
- Statistics (single optimized query)
- One-click completion
- Calendar view with monthly task grid
- Pre-fill from query parameters

14. Service Management
- Service Types CRUD: name, slug, description, color, sort order, active/inactive
- Catalog Services CRUD: name, description, type, category, price, unit label (per month/year/document/hour/case), sort order
- Service Engagements: Full tracking similar to cases with client, lawyer, status, dates, value, rates

15. Reporting & Export
- 5 Report Types: Overview, Cases, Clients, Financial, Documents
- 5 Excel Exports: Cases, Clients, Invoices, Financial, Expenses (styled headers)
- PDF reports (cases, financial)
- CSV downloads
- All data scoped by user role

16. User Management
- Admin CRUD with avatar upload + Gravatar fallback
- Role assignment, active/inactive toggle
- Self-service profile update (name, email, phone, avatar, preferred locale)
- Password change (self + admin reset)
- Deletion protection (can't delete self)
- Search + filter (role, status)

17. Multi-Currency System
- Currency CRUD (code, name, symbol, position, separators, decimals, exchange rate, active/default)
- ExchangeRate-API integration with configurable key
- Automatic rate caching (6-hour) + fallback to stored rates
- Bulk rate update
- Per-currency formatting with symbol position, decimal places, separators
- Feature flags: enable/disable conversion, multi-currency, auto-update

18. Settings System
- Database-driven settings with 1-hour cache
- Application: Name, description, logo, favicon
- Localization: Language, timezone, date/time format
- Currency: Default currency, API settings, display options
- Display: Items per page
- Notifications: Enable/disable email notifications
- Security: Session timeout
- Database: Backup retention days
- File upload for logo (2MB) and favicon (1MB)
- Brand assets served via cached route with ETag + 304 Not Modified
- Reset to defaults, cache clearing

19. Email System
- Invoice / Document / Proposal email sending with custom message
- 7 Mail Drivers: SMTP, Sendmail, Amazon SES, Postmark, Resend, Log, Array
- Full SMTP configuration (host, port, user, encrypted password, encryption, timeout)
- Configurable from/reply-to addresses
- Email queue toggle
- Test email sending

20. Secure Sharing
- Time-limited signed URLs (24-hour expiry) for invoice PDFs and documents
- WhatsApp sharing: Pre-formatted messages with signed URLs
- Throttle protection (10/minute)

21. Theme / Dark Mode
- Toggle dark/light mode via server-side cookie (1-year persistence)
- Cookie-based theme detection

22. Localization (13 Languages)
- English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali
- RTL support: Arabic
- User preference + session + cookie resolution
- Translation completeness check with missing translation warning page
- 23 translation sections per language

23. Security
- Input sanitization (HTML stripping, control char removal)
- Security headers (X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options DENY, X-XSS-Protection, CSP, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy)
- Rate limiting (60/min global, 10/min installer, 10/3/5/min backup ops)
- CSRF protection on all forms
- Policy-based authorization on every entity
- Encrypted password storage for SMTP credentials
- Audit logging (create/update/delete with old/new values, IP, user agent)

24. Database Backup & Maintenance
- Create compressed backups (mysqldump + gzip)
- Restore, download, delete backups
- Optimize and repair tables
- Database statistics (tables, size, backup count)
- Configurable retention policy
- Secure temp MySQL config files

25. Performance Optimizations
- Eager loading to prevent N+1 queries
- Cached filter dropdowns (users, cases, clients)
- Cached settings (1-hour TTL, batch loaded)
- Cached currency queries
- SQL-level aggregation for reports (GROUP BY)
- withCount for collection counts
- Asset versioning with cache busting
- Gzip compression + browser caching (.htaccess)
- ETag + Last-Modified + 304 Not Modified for brand assets

Server Requirements

- PHP: 8.2 or higher
- Database: MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.3+
- Web Server: Apache (with mod_rewrite) or Nginx
- Composer: 2.x
- Node.js: 18+ and NPM (only if modifying frontend assets)

Required PHP Extensions
- BCMath
- Ctype
- cURL
- DOM
- Fileinfo
- GD (or Imagick)
- JSON
- Mbstring
- OpenSSL
- PDO
- PDO MySQL
- SimpleXML
- Tokenizer
- XML
- XMLWriter
- Zip

Required Apache Modules
- mod_rewrite
- mod_headers (for browser caching)
- mod_deflate (for gzip compression)

Recommended
- Memory Limit: 256MB+ (memory_limit = 256M)
- Upload Max: 50MB+ (upload_max_filesize = 50M, post_max_size = 50M)
- Max Execution Time: 120s+ (max_execution_time = 120)
- Redis (optional, for cache/session driver)
- Supervisor (optional, for queue workers)
- cron (for scheduled tasks)

Folder Permissions (must be writable)
- storage/ and all subdirectories
- bootstrap/cache/

Installation Instructions

1. Upload Files
- Extract the ZIP archive
- Upload all files to your server
- For shared hosting (cPanel): Upload to public_html/ and move contents of public/ to public_html/, then adjust paths in index.php

2. Set the Document Root
- Point your web server's document root to the public/ directory
- Apache: Set DocumentRoot /path/to/casepilot/public
- Nginx: Set root /path/to/casepilot/public;
- cPanel: Set document root to public/ when adding the domain, or move public/ contents to public_html/

3. Create a MySQL Database
- Create a new MySQL database and user via your hosting panel or command line:
CREATE DATABASE casepilot;
CREATE USER 'casepilot_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON casepilot.* TO 'casepilot_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

4. Set Folder Permissions
chmod -R 775 storage/
chmod -R 775 bootstrap/cache/

5. Run the Installer
- Open your browser and visit your site URL (e.g., https://yourdomain.com)
- The installer wizard will launch automatically
- Follow the on-screen steps:
  1. Welcome — Introduction
  2. Requirements — Server compatibility check (all items must be green)
  3. Database — Enter your MySQL host, port, database name, username, and password. Click "Test Connection" to verify.
  4. Site Config — Set your application name and URL
  5. Admin Account — Create the admin user (name, email, password)
  6. Install — The system runs migrations, seeds, and finalizes automatically

6. Configure Email (Optional)
- Go to Settings → Email after logging in
- Choose your mail driver (SMTP, Sendmail, Amazon SES, Postmark, or Resend)
- Enter your SMTP credentials if using SMTP
- Send a test email to verify

7. Configure Cron Job (Recommended)
- Add this cron entry for scheduled tasks (reminders, overdue invoice checks, backup cleanup):
* * * * * php /path/to/casepilot/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

8. Post-Installation
- Log in with your admin credentials
- Go to Settings to configure:
  - Default currency and exchange rates
  - Date/time formats
  - Logo and favicon
  - Language preference
- Create Case Types and Categories under Case Settings
- Create Users and assign roles (Admin, Lawyer, Assistant)