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Vakeel Desk: law-firm case management
A secure case, hearing and billing platform for a Lahore litigation firm that was running on WhatsApp groups and Excel sheets.
- Django
- PostgreSQL
- Svelte
- Tailwind CSS
- Client
- Mid-sized law firm, Lahore (sample)
- My role
- Full-stack developer (design to deployment)
- Timeline
- 4 months
0 missed hearings
Automatic cause-list reminders
−70% admin time
On billing and case updates
9 days → 1 day
To produce monthly client invoices
The problem
Fourteen lawyers tracked hearing dates in personal diaries and WhatsApp. Documents lived on individual laptops, two hearings had been missed in a year, and billable time was reconstructed from memory at month end, so invoices were late and often under-billed.
My approach
I modelled the firm's real workflow first: client, matter, court, hearing, task, document and time entry. Django owns the business rules and permissions, PostgreSQL stores everything relationally, and a Svelte app gives lawyers a fast calendar and matter view they can use between court sessions.
The hardest part
Confidentiality enforced by the system, not by habit
A junior should never open a partner's sensitive matter, yet teams overlap. I put matter-level access in a single Django permission layer that every API view and every file download passes through, and wrote an audit log of who opened or changed what. Tests cover the permission matrix, so a new feature cannot quietly bypass it.
How the technology solved it
Django
Domain models, permission layer, audit log, scheduled reminder jobs and invoice PDF generation.
PostgreSQL
Relational integrity between matters, hearings and billing; full-text search across case notes; row-level history for the audit trail.
Svelte
Responsive calendar and matter views with instant filtering, so lawyers can update a case in seconds from a phone.
Tailwind CSS
A consistent, accessible interface that looks professional in front of clients.
What I built
- Matter timeline with hearings, orders, notes and linked documents
- Cause-list calendar with email reminders and WhatsApp-ready messages
- One-click time entries that roll up into itemised PDF invoices
- Role-based access with a full audit trail
The result
All hearings now flow through one shared calendar and reminders go out automatically. The firm reports no missed dates since launch, and partners review billing from a live dashboard instead of chasing diaries.