Custom Legal Intake for Bankruptcy: Inside the App We Built for Machi Wright & Associates
How we built a bankruptcy-specific intake and case management application for a DFW bankruptcy law firm — and why off-the-shelf legal intake software couldn’t do the job.
The problem with generic legal intake software
When Daniel Wright at Machi Wright & Associates — a Dallas–Fort Worth bankruptcy firm — first reached out to us, he was losing hours every week fighting his intake software. The tools on the market (Clio Grow, Lawmatics, CasePeer, Law Ruler) were built for personal injury, estate planning, and civil litigation. None of them knew what a Means Test was. None of them had a place to store a creditor matrix. None of them could track a 341 meeting deadline.
So his team did what every bankruptcy firm running generic software does: they worked around it. They tracked Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 filing deadlines in spreadsheets. They re-entered creditor information from one system into another. They calculated Means Test qualifications in a standalone PDF form. They sent follow-up emails by hand. And every shortcut became a place where cases leaked out of the pipeline.
Daniel didn’t want a better Clio. He wanted software that actually understood bankruptcy.
What bankruptcy firms actually need
When we sat down to map the workflow, we weren’t designing an intake form — we were designing a case management system that could carry a bankruptcy from the first phone call all the way to discharge. Here’s what we built into it.
1. Deadline tracking that speaks bankruptcy
Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 come with hard deadlines — 341 meetings, objection windows, plan confirmation dates, reaffirmation hearings. Miss one and the case can be dismissed or converted. We built a calendar view specifically for bankruptcy deadlines with Upcoming, This Week, Overdue, and This Month counters so nothing slips through the cracks.
2. A Means Test calculator inside the case file
The Chapter 7 Means Test (Official Form 122A-1) is the qualification gate for every Chapter 7 filing in the country. Most bankruptcy firms bounce between their intake software, a PDF of the form, and a separate calculator. We baked the entire Means Test directly into the case file — Filing Info, Income, Expenses & Deductions, and Results all in the same place where the rest of the case data already lives. No more alt-tabbing. No more re-entering applicable median family income.
3. Creditor matrix management
Every bankruptcy case has a creditor matrix: the full list of people and companies the debtor owes money to. It becomes the backbone of the schedules and the mailing list the court uses to notice creditors. Generic intake software has no place to store these. We built a per-case creditor record system that makes preparing Schedules D, E/F, and the mailing matrix dramatically faster.
4. Bankruptcy-specific document checklists
The paperwork for a Chapter 7 is different from a Chapter 13, which is different from a small business reorganization. We built per-case document checklists plus a template manager, so every new bankruptcy case opens with the correct document list from day one — pay stubs, tax returns, bank statements, credit reports, title documents, whatever the type of filing requires.
5. Automated client drip emails
Clients start an intake and then disappear. They get busy. They get scared. They procrastinate. We built a drip email engine into the app with Welcome, 24-hour, 72-hour, and 7-day reminder sequences triggered from case events. No Mailchimp, no ActiveCampaign, no third-party tool — just the app, the cron job, and the SMTP server. Every client gets the same professional follow-up without the team having to remember to send it.
The four-phase build process
Every custom legal application we build follows the same four-phase process:
Phase 1 — Discovery. We sit with the firm and map the actual workflow, not the one in the org chart. What does the paralegal really do between intake and the signed retainer? Where are the hand-offs? Where do cases leak?
Phase 2 — Architecture. We spec out the data model, authentication, and integrations — Stripe for retainers, SMTP for email, calendar APIs for deadlines, document storage for exhibits. Security and backup are designed in, not bolted on.
Phase 3 — Build. Iterative and sprint-based. Daniel saw working screens within two weeks and gave feedback on live builds instead of wireframes.
Phase 4 — Launch and hardening. Security review, backup configuration, staff training, and a 30-day white-glove launch period where we sit on standby while the firm ports their live cases into the new system.
Is custom right for your firm?
Custom application development isn’t the right answer for every firm. If your practice area is well-served by Clio, MyCase, or Smokeball, stay where you are. Those are good tools for general civil practice.
But if you’re in a niche — bankruptcy, immigration, SSDI, mass tort, construction defect, estate administration — and your software makes you work around its limitations every single day, it’s worth having a conversation about what a purpose-built tool would actually cost compared to the hours you’re burning on workarounds.
If that sounds like your firm, take a look at our custom application development service page or get in touch to talk through what the build would look like for your practice area.
