The client
Oakwood Legal is a growing general practice law firm providing property, private client and family law services.
As demand increased, the firm expanded from 12 to 28 fee earners across multiple practice areas. While this growth created new opportunities, it also increased the complexity of managing matters, documents, workloads and internal controls.
Oakwood Legal introduced Cinqd to create a more structured way to manage its growing operation while maintaining visibility and consistency across teams.
Cinqd capabilities implemented:
- Task and matter management
- Document management
- Structured workflows
- Role-based permissions
- Team and workload management
- Analytics and reporting
The challenge
As Oakwood Legal expanded, processes that had worked for a smaller team became increasingly difficult to manage consistently. Matter handling could vary between teams, while documents and important information required manual tracking. Partners also had limited visibility over junior fee-earner workloads, making supervision more dependent on individual updates and regular check-ins.
Bringing new employees into the firm created additional pressure. New fee earners needed to understand how matters should progress, which responsibilities they owned and which internal processes needed to be followed.
As teams and matter volumes increased, maintaining consistent ways of working became more difficult. Oakwood Legal needed a scalable operating structure that could give teams clear processes while allowing partners to maintain appropriate oversight as the firm continued to grow.
How Cinqd helped Oakwood Legal scale with greater control
Bringing matter information together
Cinqd helped Oakwood Legal create a more connected structure around each matter. Relevant documents, tasks, decisions and activity could be associated with the matter, giving employees greater context without requiring them to search across separate folders and systems.
When work moved between employees, the next person could more easily understand what had already happened and what still required action. This created greater continuity as matters progressed through different stages and teams.
Strengthening access and internal controls
Some legal matters and documents require tighter access than others. Cinqd’s granular permissions allowed Oakwood Legal to control who could view, edit or manage particular information based on roles and responsibilities.
Clearer access controls also helped the firm maintain appropriate separation of access and responsibilities around sensitive work. This gave partners greater control over information access as the number of employees and teams increased.
Standardising matter workflows
Oakwood Legal introduced structured workflows around repeatable activities across its practice areas. Common stages could include defined tasks, owners and deadlines, giving employees a clearer process to follow without removing the flexibility required for individual matters.
This was particularly valuable when onboarding new fee earners because key operational steps were built into the workflow rather than relying entirely on employees learning processes informally.
Improving workload and supervision visibility
As the firm expanded from 12 to 28 fee earners, understanding how work was distributed became increasingly important. Cinqd gave partners and managers greater visibility over responsibilities, outstanding tasks and workloads across teams.
This helped partners and managers identify where workloads were becoming stretched and which matters required additional attention.. Partners could maintain greater oversight without needing to continually request progress updates from every fee earner.
The results
Oakwood Legal created a more structured operational foundation as its team and matter volumes increased.
Growth without losing operational control
The firm expanded from 12 to 28 fee earners while maintaining clearer visibility over matters, responsibilities and workloads.
More consistent matter management
Structured workflows gave teams clearer processes to follow across different practice areas.
Faster employee onboarding
New fee earners could work within established processes with clearer responsibilities and workflow stages.
Stronger management oversight
Partners gained greater visibility over workloads, outstanding work and matter progress without relying as heavily on manual updates.
Clearer records and controls
More connected matter information and role-based permissions gave the firm greater control over documents, activity and access.
Before and after Cinqd
| Before Cinqd | After Cinqd |
| Matter handling varied between teams | More consistent matter workflows |
| Documents required manual tracking | Documents and activity connected to matters |
| Limited visibility over junior workloads | Clearer workload and responsibility visibility |
| New employees relied heavily on informal processes | Structured workflows support onboarding |
| Partners depended on individual updates | Greater visibility over matter progress |
| Access became harder to manage as the firm grew | Role-based permissions and clearer controls |
The overall impact
Cinqd helped Oakwood Legal create a more scalable way to manage the operational complexity that came with growth. By connecting matters, documents, workflows, responsibilities and team visibility, the firm could introduce greater consistency without making legal work unnecessarily rigid.
Fee earners gained clearer processes to follow, while partners maintained greater visibility over workloads and ongoing matters as the team expanded.
Rather than adding more manual supervision as the firm grew, Oakwood Legal established a connected business operating system that could support increasing teams and matter volumes with greater structure and control.
Could Cinqd help your law firm scale?
Cinqd brings matters, tasks, workflows, documents, permissions and team visibility together in one connected business operating system. Create more consistent ways of working, maintain clearer oversight and give growing legal teams the operational structure they need without adding unnecessary complexity.
Book a demo to see how Cinqd can help your law firm grow with greater visibility and control.
