Every active development brings its own contractor disputes, delay and payment claims, authority approvals and stacks of project documents, and on a busy portfolio it is easy for a claim or an approval to slip while it sits in someone's inbox. Smart Legal Counsel gives your in-house legal team one platform for every dispute, claim, legal request, approval and document, organised by project, so the head of legal sees the whole portfolio at a glance. Trusted by 10,000+ legal professionals.
Smart Legal Counsel is legal matter management software for the in-house legal team of a real estate or property developer, not a law firm. It pulls every dispute, claim, litigation file, legal request, authority approval, project document and trade licence into one platform, organised by development and project company. The outcome: claims and approvals stop slipping, disputes are caught early, and outside-counsel spend on a litigation-heavy portfolio finally has an owner.
No more digging through shared drives mid-dispute. Corporate Legal Case & Document Management holds every matter, claim, notice and project document for each development in one searchable, audit-ready place.
Case & Document ManagementLegal Litigation Management tracks contractor, subcontractor and buyer disputes, delay and payment claims, arbitration and hearing dates per project, so legal sees the whole dispute load in real time, not in inboxes.
Legal Litigation ManagementEvery request from project, sales and leasing teams lands in one triaged queue through Legal Intake Management, tagged to the right development with clear ownership, priority and a full audit trail.
Legal Intake ManagementA per-project calendar flags every permit, approval, no-objection certificate and key submission early, so an authority deadline never quietly lapses on a development while the team is busy elsewhere.
Approvals & Project DocumentsLegal Expense & Panel Management shows what each firm and arbitration counsel is billing against each dispute and development, so the head of legal controls spend instead of approving invoices blind.
Expense & Panel ManagementRenewal lifecycle tracking watches every contract, trade licence, permit and purchase order to its renewal date, so a contractor agreement, a project trade licence or a permit never lapses and stalls a development.
Renewal Lifecycle ManagementAnalytical Insights roll disputes, claims, litigation exposure and legal spend across every development into one report, so legal answers leadership on project risk in minutes, not days.
Analytical InsightsFrom construction disputes and project claims to legal-request intake, authority approvals, project documents, the trade-licence portfolio and outside-counsel spend, every legal workflow on every development runs in one place. Your in-house team works from one project-by-project record, and the head of legal keeps full visibility across the whole portfolio.
Give the legal team one structured home for every contractor, subcontractor and buyer dispute, delay and payment claim, defect matter and litigation file, each linked to its development. Hearing and arbitration dates, exposure and external-counsel activity are tracked per project so nothing sits forgotten in an inbox, and matter templates let a new project come online in minutes, not weeks.
Record each project's permits, approvals and no-objection certificates once, alongside its key project documents and the trade-licence portfolio of its project company, and let the platform watch every date for you. Automated reminders cover approvals, filings, renewals and notices, while risk management gives leadership one view of where compliance exposure sits across the portfolio.
Every request, review and approval routes automatically to the right lawyer and project, so there is no lag between “the project team asked” and “legal delivered”. Purchase orders, procurement and approvals tied to a contractor, consultant or vendor are reviewed and signed off alongside the contracts they sit under, and the team signs and approves contracts, approvals, notices and renewals in-platform with a built-in secure e-signature, no third-party tool, so signing stays part of the approval and renewal lifecycle. Email integration keeps dispute correspondence on the matter, the law firm panel keeps arbitration and litigation counsel accountable, and time-sheet recording captures where the legal team's effort goes across developments.
Track legal expense against every dispute and development, share documents securely with role-based access, and turn the whole portfolio into reporting leadership can act on. The same platform extends to full-lifecycle contract management for development and construction agreements, so executed contracts, the disputes they generate and the projects they belong to live together instead of in silos.
A developer's in-house legal team should not run compliance management in one spreadsheet, contract management in a shared drive, the trade licence register in another file and purchase orders in someone's inbox. Smart Legal Counsel brings the work buyers usually search for as separate tools, compliance, contracts, trade licences, procurement approvals and renewals, into one platform built around your project portfolio. One roof, one record per development, one place the head of legal can actually see.
Compliance management keeps every project company aligned to its obligations, filings and reporting, with a portfolio-wide view of where exposure sits across developments, so leadership is never surprised by a compliance gap on a single project.
Compliance ManagementTrack every contractor, consultant and vendor agreement through its full lifecycle, linked to its project. For deep drafting, negotiation and clause-level contract management, the same platform extends into Beveron's dedicated CLM.
Contract ManagementTrade licence management holds the licence for every project company in one register, with the renewal and amendment dates tracked automatically, so a licence on a project nobody was actively watching never quietly expires.
Trade Licence ManagementManage purchase orders, procurement and approvals alongside the contracts they sit under, so a contractor or vendor PO is reviewed, approved and tied to its agreement and project, not floating in an email thread on its own.
Purchase Order & Procurement TrackingContracts, trade licences, permits and purchase orders are tracked through their full renewal lifecycle, with reminders well before each date falls due, so nothing lapses and stalls a development. One calendar, every renewal, never missed.
Renewal Lifecycle ManagementInstead of scattered spreadsheets and inboxes, the in-house legal team works from a single platform across the whole portfolio, with compliance, contracts, licences, purchase orders and renewals connected to the projects they belong to.
Unified Legal PlatformEvery development carries its own contractor disputes, claims, approvals and project documents, and most of it lives in spreadsheets, shared drives and email threads the head of legal cannot see in one place.
The pattern repeats on almost every portfolio: a delay or variation claim drifts because the file sat in someone's inbox, a permit or approval deadline passes unnoticed on a project nobody was actively watching, a contractor dispute escalates to arbitration before legal is fully briefed, and outside-counsel and arbitration spend climbs with no single view of who is billing on which project. When leadership asks “where do our disputes and exposure stand across all projects?”, the answer takes days to pull together.
See what changesThe problem. A property developer building several residential and mixed-use towers at once ran its legal work from a small in-house team. Contractor delay and variation claims, buyer complaints, snagging and defect disputes, permits and approvals were all tracked in spreadsheets and email. Claims drifted while files sat unread, an approval almost lapsed on one tower, and when management asked about dispute exposure across the projects, the team spent days assembling the answer.
What they did. They moved every development onto Smart Legal Counsel. Each project got its own file, contractor and buyer disputes were logged as matters with hearing and arbitration dates, the approvals and project documents for each tower were loaded with reminders, and arbitration and litigation counsel were routed through the law firm panel with spend tracked per dispute.
The result. The legal team now runs the portfolio from one workspace: every project's disputes, claims, approvals and counsel spend are visible in real time, no approval deadline slips quietly, management's questions on project exposure are answered the same day, and the team handles more developments without chasing files across inboxes.
Smart Legal Counsel fits the developer's existing stack, with single sign-on, role-based access, audit trails, Microsoft 365 and Teams, and your choice of cloud or on-premise hosting.
One-click sign-in through your existing Active Directory and single sign-on, so the legal team uses the same identity and password policy as the rest of the business.
Works inside Microsoft Office, Outlook, SharePoint and Teams, so dispute emails, project documents and approvals stay in the tools you already run.
Automate request routing, approval reminders and document triage, with AI that can run on-premise for developers that keep legal data in-house.
Dashboards plus dispute, claim, litigation and expense reports across every development, ready to take into a project or leadership review.
Capture legal time per lawyer, matter and project, so the developer can see where the legal team's effort actually goes.
Optional module to manage the legal department's own headcount, leave and payroll alongside its matters.
Connect OneDrive and the document storage your business already uses, so project legal files stay where IT expects them.
Deploy in the cloud or on-premise on your own servers, so the legal data stays under your IT and data-residency policy.
Granular permissions by project, team and matter, so each user sees only the developments and files they are cleared for.
Every view, edit and approval is logged with user and timestamp, giving a defensible record for audit and dispute proceedings.
Legal data is encrypted in transit and at rest, helping the developer meet its data protection and compliance obligations.
Regular, recoverable backups protect every project's disputes, claims and approval records against loss.
Watch how a developer's in-house legal team runs construction and contractor disputes, project claims and litigation, legal-request intake, authority approvals, project documents and the trade-licence portfolio across every development in one connected platform.
Give your in-house team one platform for disputes, claims, litigation, legal requests, approvals and trade licences across every development. Tell us about your project portfolio and we will tailor the walkthrough.
Latest articles, guides, and resources for corporate legal departments