Coale-Sheria
Legal practice management on ERPNext
Coale-Sheria is a legal practice management system built natively on ERPNext. It covers the full case lifecycle—from intake and hearings to trust accounting and billing—while the optional Sheria Voice add-on enables blind and visually impaired users to operate the entire system hands-free through WhatsApp voice notes.
Key capabilities
Legal Case Lifecycle Management
Track every case from filing to closure with appellants, respondents, courts, judges, assigned lawyers, and opposition counsel. Record legislation references, attach case documents, set deadlines, and maintain a full status history with automatic audit logging of every change.
Case Hearing & Court Scheduling
Schedule hearings with court, judge, date, time, and hearing type. Record outcomes and set next hearing dates. Automatic WhatsApp reminders alert assigned lawyers before upcoming hearings so no court date is missed.
Trust Account Management
Record deposits, withdrawals, payments, and adjustments with running balances. Every transaction validates the client's trust balance before processing—insufficient funds are blocked at entry. Generate trust account statements and ledger reports for regulator review.
Client Portal & Legal Resources
Clients log in to a web portal to view their cases, service requests, and trust balances in real time. Publish legal articles and resources with categories, tags, and file attachments for public or client-only access.
Client Services, Consultations & Feedback
Log service requests with urgency and priority tracking. Book consultations with duration, type, fee, and outcome notes. Collect structured client feedback on communication, timeliness, and value to measure service quality.
Legal Document Automation
Build document templates for engagement letters, retainers, affidavits, and contracts with merge fields. Validate that every {placeholder} has a matching field definition. Auto-generate documents when a lead is created, opportunity converts, or case opens.
Timesheet & Billing Integration
Employee hourly billing rates auto-populate timesheet rows linked to legal cases. Billable hours and amounts calculate automatically. The case billing summary report aggregates timesheet fees, legal fees, invoiced amounts, and outstanding balances per case.
CRM-to-Case Pipeline
Leads and opportunities validate KRA PIN format automatically (A/P + 9 digits + letter). Client type validation ensures individuals and companies supply required fields. When an opportunity converts, a Legal Case is created automatically with client details pre-populated.
Staff Instructions & Role-Based Security
Create tracked staff instructions with deadlines, send them via WhatsApp, and monitor replies. Daily automation flags overdue instructions. Four built-in roles—Legal Admin, Lawyer, Legal Assistant, and Client—each see only their permitted cases and data.
Sheria Voice — Accessibility Add-on
Sheria Voice — AI Voice Assistant
A blind managing partner can run the entire firm through WhatsApp voice notes—no screen required. The Gemini AI assistant transcribes spoken commands, executes them via function calling, and speaks responses back. Case lookups, staff instructions, time entry, and hearing rescheduling are all hands-free.
Bilingual Text-to-Speech
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech generates natural OGG/opus voice notes in Kenyan English (en-KE) and Swahili (sw-KE). Numbers are spoken in words, lists are clearly numbered, and responses stay concise for audio comprehension.
Spoken Daily Brief
Every morning the system gathers today's hearings, urgent deadlines, staff updates, pending tasks, new documents, case changes, financials, and new inquiries—then summarizes them into a spoken briefing delivered as a WhatsApp voice note.
Why teams choose this
- Manage the full legal case lifecycle inside ERPNext with courts, judges, hearings, and deadlines
- Track every client shilling in trust accounts with real-time balance validation and regulator-ready statements
- Give clients self-service access to their cases, requests, and trust balances through a dedicated portal
- Convert CRM opportunities into legal cases automatically with KRA PIN validation and zero re-entry
- Auto-generate engagement letters and contracts from templates with validated merge fields
- Bill every hour accurately with auto-populated timesheet rates and case-level billing summaries
- Optional Sheria Voice add-on: a blind partner can independently run the firm through WhatsApp voice notes
- Hear case details and firm financials spoken naturally in Kenyan English or Swahili via the voice add-on