LexNebulis vs Outlaw Practice

LexNebulis is a free, self-hosted legal practice management platform for small law firms. It handles clients and matters, documents, calendars, time tracking, billing, and trust accounting. Legal workflows include conflict checks, client intake, document templates and generation, e-signature, and a client portal. Billing supports LEDES 1998B and 2000 export, UTBMS codes, and electronic invoice submission. Listed connections cover Stripe and LawPay payments, QuickBooks and CSV accounting export, and Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive storage. Security features include encryption at rest and in transit, bcrypt password hashing, JWT authentication, and TOTP or WebAuthn/FIDO2 two-factor authentication. Its append-only audit log uses SHA-256 hash chaining to make tampering or deletion detectable. The software is free for commercial use under Apache License 2.0. Installation requires Docker and Docker Compose v2, at least 2 GB RAM, and at least 10 GB disk space. The guide specifies a Linux server and recommends Ubuntu 22.04 or later; macOS is specified for development. The project wiki describes a target range of 1 to 50 users.

Outlaw Practice combines marketing, client intake, case management, billing, trust accounting, payments, and reporting in one platform for solo and small firms with 1–10 attorneys. During intake, it prompts firms to screen clients for conflicts and red flags. Campaigns and referral sources can be tracked through to the cases they produce. Starting a task starts its timer, and captured billable time is associated with the case. Billing supports hourly, flat, contingency, and hybrid arrangements. A secure client portal gives clients access to invoices, documents, and intake forms. Outlaw Payments connects payments to invoices and updates trust ledgers and receivables; operating and trust accounts can be linked through Plaid. Financial permissions can control who views financial information, takes payments, and generates invoices. The app can accept work offline and sync saved changes when a connection returns, but payments and data exports require a live connection. Firm data can be exported as CSV or JSON. The Outlaw Practice plan is $50 a month per user, billed monthly; a free trial is available, but there is no free plan.