Question 1

What kinds of documents does the AI read?

Accepted Answer

Engagement letters (flat-rate and hourly), retainer and fee agreements, conflict-of-interest disclosures, mutual and one-way NDAs, client intake forms and KYC/AML where applicable, prior-matter files pulled in for context, scanned court orders and pleadings, and settlement and closing statements. PDFs, phone photos, and paper scans all work — the extractor normalizes the layout and lifts the parties, dates, dollar figures, and scope terms into the matter record.

Question 2

How does the anomaly flagging actually work?

Accepted Answer

Each extracted field is run against a small, matter-specific ruleset: an unsigned engagement letter on a new matter; a missing conflict-of-interest disclosure; an NDA term inside 30 days of expiry; a trust-account deposit with no matching invoice; a flat-rate scope whose paragraph count grew past what the engagement covers; and a prior-matter reference that won't reconcile. Anomalies surface as a checklist on the matter record so you can decide to chase them or let them go — nothing is auto-drafted.

Question 3

Will my clients see anything, or is this just for me?

Accepted Answer

Plumbmark is a back-office tool for one solo practitioner, not a client-facing portal. Your client never logs in; you collect their documents however you already do (email, text, in person) and load them into the intake pipeline. That keeps the matter record on your side of the counter — appropriate for a lawyer working without docketing software — and avoids the awkward "I forgot my portal password" emails.

Question 4

How fast does a new matter go from "I'll send it" to "ready to draft"?

Accepted Answer

Once the engagement is signed and the intake data — ID, parties, prior-matter context, and the first wave of pleadings — lands, most matters finish onboarding in under 10 minutes. Engagement letters, NDAs, and trust-account receipts are extracted as they arrive; the AI pulls the structured fields and you review the assembled matter file by the next morning.

Question 5

What happens to the data and the AI extraction — is my clients' PII safe?

Accepted Answer

Documents are stored encrypted at rest and only your operator account can read them. The LLM extraction runs against a sealed extract-and-verify flow — the model sees the document for parsing only, never to train on, and the structured matter-record fields are what get saved. No third-party retraining, no data sale, and the complete matter record is yours to export or delete.

Question 6

Is this a replacement for Clio, MyCase, Smokeball, or PracticePanther?

Accepted Answer

No. Plumbmark is the front-of-house intake and prep layer; it hands you a clean, reconciled, anomaly-flagged matter record at the start of a new engagement. You still use the case-management and docketing tool of record you're already on — Plumbmark's job is to make that hand-off fast and complete, not to replace the day-to-day matter work.

AI document collection for solo lawyers

One practitioner. Twenty matters. A matter folder that never quite matches what the client thinks they signed.

Three things that move the needle on a solo lawyer's day.

Solo lawyers ask, before they sign up.

Start the next matter already on top of the paperwork.