Software for a firm without an IT department
Two to ten lawyers, no dedicated support staff, and no appetite for a six-month rollout. Whisperit covers the drafting and case-file half of the job, and leaves your billing system alone.
Six things a small firm actually needs
Not an enterprise suite with the useful parts buried three menus deep.
Dictation that produces documents
Speak a letter or a memo and get a formatted draft back, in French, German, Italian or English. No transcription pool required.
Case files the assistant has read
Upload everything for a matter once, then ask questions about it. Parties, dates and open points come back with the paragraph they came from.
Drafting from your own templates
Your precedents and your house style, applied consistently by whoever happens to be drafting.
Research with citations
Answers that link to their source, so a junior's work can be checked in minutes rather than redone.
Set up in a week, not a quarter
No migration project and no consultant. Import what you need and keep working.
Priced per lawyer
Costs that scale with the firm, not a seat minimum written for a hundred-lawyer practice.
Four steps to a working setup
Start with one matter
Pick an active file, upload it, and ask three questions you already know the answer to. That is the fastest way to calibrate how far to trust it.
Add your templates
Load the precedents you reuse most. Drafting quality jumps once the system knows your house style.
Move dictation across
Most firms see the biggest single gain here, because it removes a handoff rather than speeding one up.
Bring in the rest of the team
Shared templates and per-lawyer access, without a permissions matrix to design first.
What we cover, and what we don't
Most software marketed to small firms is a billing system with features attached. This is the other half. Read the third column before you switch anything off.
| Job to be done | What most small firms use | Whisperit |
|---|---|---|
| Drafting letters, memos and briefs | Word plus copy-paste from old files | Covered, from dictation to formatted draft |
| Reading into a new matter | Whoever has time, reading the folder | Covered, with cited answers over the file |
| Legal research | Public databases and a shared subscription | Covered, with sources linked |
| Case and document organisation | A shared drive and a naming convention | Covered, searchable across the matter |
| Time tracking and billing | Clio, MyCase, Bexio or a spreadsheet | Not covered. Keep what you have. |
| Client funds accounting and compliance ledgers | Your accountant's system | Not covered, and you should not want it to be. |
Small firm questions, answered
Do we have to replace our billing system?
No, and we would advise against trying. Whisperit covers drafting, case files and research. Billing, client funds accounting and conflict checks stay where they are. Firms that consolidate everything at once usually end up doing neither job well.
How long does setup actually take?
Most small firms are working in it the same week. There is no data migration to schedule, because you can start with a single matter and add files as you go. Loading your templates is the longest step, and that is a couple of hours.
Is it affordable for a firm of three?
It is priced per lawyer with no seat minimum, which is usually the thing that rules out enterprise legal AI for small firms. The comparison worth doing is against the hours currently spent on documentation, not against a cheaper tool that does less.
What about client confidentiality?
Everything is processed and stored in Switzerland, under Swiss jurisdiction, encrypted in transit and at rest, and never used to train models. A small firm carries exactly the same professional secrecy obligations as a large one, with less compliance support, so this matters more rather than less.
Who at the firm has to run it?
Nobody. There is no admin console to staff and no permissions matrix to design before you start. That is deliberate: a firm of five does not have a person to spare for tool administration.
Try it on a live matter this week
Start with one file you already know well, and judge it on what it finds.