App demo
Winterbourne FileWinterbourne & Pemberton Attorneys, Columbus
Matter 214/26
The status people otherwise call the office for: five steps, each entered by hand. The current one is waiting on you — two documents missing, reply by Monday 17 Aug.
- In the hands of
- Client with a matter in progress
- Shown on
- iOS — title centred, swipe bar below
- Replaces
- Replaces the letter for every interim update, the document sent as an email attachment, and the call to the office asking how things stand. The state of matter 214/26 can be read at any hour, and the two missing pay stubs go encrypted from the app — by email the firm is not permitted to accept them at all.
Everything in this demo is laid out and none of it acts: buttons only report that they have no effect in the demo, checkboxes are fixed, input fields lead nowhere. Nothing is stored, sent or fetched.
How Awelior would approach this project
Winterbourne & Pemberton Attorneys, Columbus is invented — the way it is built is not. None of this is work delivered for a client. It is the shape we would give such a project — with the same depth, but without a client who would have to answer for it.
Where it starts
Winterbourne & Pemberton Attorneys write a letter for every interim update and will not accept documents by email. The client calls the office to ask how things stand, and the office interrupts something else to answer. The route is not cumbersome out of inertia: the easy route — email with an attachment — is simply not open to a law firm.
Decisions
Professional secrecy dictates how it is built
An attorney's duty of confidentiality is backed both by the bar's rules and by law. Visible consequences follow: the app opens only after the device is unlocked, the app switcher shows a blank surface instead of the last screen, and a lock-screen notification names the case reference — never a sentence from the message.
The deadline does not live in this app
What appears here is a copy from the firm's own deadline register. A firm that hangs its deadlines on a phone display has none — and so, when a request fails, the last loaded state stays on screen rather than vanishing.
Every line says whose turn it is
“The firm” means: you need do nothing. “Over to you” means: nothing moves without you. The date for that deliberately sits before the deadline itself, because a client deadline on the deadline day is not one.
Deliberately left outNo facts of the case. Nowhere in this demo does it say what a matter is about — a reference, a type of deadline and a procedural stage are enough to show what the app does. An invented case that looked like a real one would be neither necessary nor appropriate; and in a finished app the contents of a file belong in the file.
What is in it
- Screens
- 5
- Tabs
- 4
- Content blocks
- 16
- Languages
- 4
Navigation responds, including the route from the overview into a single matter and back. The document form, the message box and the deadline view are fully rendered and inert; the four states have a view of their own, and none of them shows content before unlocking.
How it would go on
Connection to the practice system
Files, deadlines, hearings and documents live there. The app is the client's view of them; a second deadline calendar would be a professional risk, not a feature.
Processing agreements and where the data sits
Whoever maintains the technology is bound by the same duty of confidentiality. Encryption, server location, supplier access and the agreement covering it belong at the start of the project.
Access, cover and closure
How a client gets an account, who sees it when a colleague covers, what happens when the matter closes, and how long anything stays readable afterwards.
An app like this for your business?
Winterbourne File is invented — the fit is not. Apps come about exactly this way: from the routes that already exist in a business, only without the paper in between.
Sample app by Awelior. Invented business, invented data, nothing stored.