Collect.
Scellus places intake records, identity documents, title records, searches, signed forms, and correspondence in one matter queue.
Case study · Scellus Matter Readiness
A 20-lawyer firm took conveyancing readiness from 37% to 80% in four weeks.
Ready means every checklist item complete and sourced three working days before lodgement. In the pilot, 73 of 91 matters cleared that gate, against 31 of 84 before it. Median final review fell from 31 minutes to 15 minutes per matter.
Anonymised Malaysian law firm / Malaysia / Four-week pilot
Matters ready by T-3
37%80%
31 of 84 → 73 of 91 matters
Every checklist item complete and sourced three working days before scheduled lodgement.
Time to clear missing items
4.71.9days
median, per missing item
Resolution or approved-exception date minus the date the item was found.
Fee-earner review time
3115min
median, sampled review log
Time spent on readiness and exception review, excluding substantive legal work.
01 · The result
The firm reached an 80% T-3 readiness rate.
Six conveyancing lawyers and eight clerks or support staff handled residential subsale matters. Their records sat across a document management system, email, shared folders, and WhatsApp.
At baseline, 31 of 84 matters reached the readiness gate three working days before lodgement. During the pilot, 73 of 91 matters reached the same gate.
02 · The problem
Why conveyancing files reached final review with open items.
Clerks checked files and chased clients throughout each matter. Personal notes, message threads, and memory held the current status.
A fee earner often had to find the latest document, compare its details, and list each open item before they could start the legal review. Final review meant working backwards through the file.
The firm needed one view that showed which matters were ready, what remained open, and who owned the next action.
03 · The fix
Matter Readiness is a workflow, not a system to install.
Every Scellus workflow is assembled from the same six blocks: Collect, Read, Verify, Chase, Review, and Deliver. Matter Readiness is the name for those blocks wired to one firm’s checklist and deadlines. Nothing new was installed, and the team kept working in the systems it already had.
Two setup decisions shaped the pilot. One checklist covered every residential subsale matter, so each file was measured against the same list. The readiness gate sat three working days before scheduled lodgement, so a missing document surfaced while there was still time to get it.
From there the workflow ran every working day. It pulled the required documents and status records into one queue, checked the agreed fields against their sources, opened an action for each missing item, and passed mismatches and judgement calls to the fee earner with the source attached.
The conveyancing team kept legal judgement, supervision, exception approval, and final sign-off. No legal decision sat with the workflow.
04 · What the workflow does
Six steps from source document to a review-ready matter.
Each step records the source, output, and next owner.
Read.
Matter Readiness extracts names, identity numbers, title details, dates, and the fields required by the checklist.
Verify.
Scellus compares the agreed fields with the title, land search, client record, and other approved sources.
Chase.
Scellus follows the firm’s approved rules for missing documents and records each response.
Review.
Matter Readiness sends mismatches and judgement calls to the fee earner with the supporting source.
Deliver.
Scellus provides a daily readiness view, exception list, checklist record, and sign-off history.
05 · Who decides what
Scellus runs the queue. The law firm makes the legal decisions.
Each working day, Scellus checked new and changed matters against the agreed checklist. It opened missing-item actions, tracked their age, and prepared exceptions for review.
The conveyancing team resolved genuine discrepancies, approved exceptions, and made the final readiness decision.
During the pilot, Scellus tracked the readiness rate, time to clear missing items, and review time. It also recorded every change to the checklist and escalation rules.
Each working day.
Scellus checks new and changed matters, then opens and tracks missing-item actions.
When an exception appears.
The conveyancing team resolves the discrepancy or approves an exception.
Across the pilot.
Scellus reports the three measures and records changes to the operating rules.
06 · The measured result
How Matter Readiness raised T-3 readiness from 37% to 80%.
The four-week baseline recorded 31 of 84 matters ready three working days before scheduled lodgement. The four-week pilot recorded 73 of 91 matters at the same gate. Median time to clear a missing item fell from 4.7 working days to 1.9 days. Median sampled fee-earner review time fell from 31 minutes to 15 minutes per matter.
- Baseline cohort
- Four weeks before setup · 84 matters
- Pilot cohort
- Four weeks after setup and parallel testing · 91 matters
- 01
Open items surface earlier.
The team saw incomplete matters while it still had time to act.
- 02
Fee earners review the decision, not the file history.
Each exception arrived with the document, discrepancy, source, and next action.
Measured improvement.
Method: The comparison covered one matter type at the same readiness gate across two four-week cohorts. A matter counted as ready when each checklist item was complete or had an approved exception, owner, and supporting source. The cohort kept matters when external parties caused delays.
The readiness record documents checklist completion, source checks, follow-up, exceptions, and sign-off. The law firm still determines legal compliance, liability, and professional indemnity terms.
Sources.
- Jurisk!, September 2013 (2013)Historical industry context. The publication uses fictitious names.
- Jurisk! archiveMalaysian Bar PII Scheme Portal archive.
Measure readiness before the next lodgement deadline.
Choose one matter type. Scellus will map its checklist, readiness gate, review points, and first result to measure.