The invisible infrastructure after a case settles

Most legal-tech tools end at the courthouse. Matter management software tracks the case through litigation; e-filing tools handle the paperwork; document automation drafts the pleadings. They all assume the work ends when the case resolves. It doesn’t.

After a settlement, the work changes character. It becomes reconciliation: did the carrier send what they said they would? Disbursement: who gets paid, in what order, and from which sub-account? Audit: can the firm produce a defensible record of every dollar that moved? Different verbs, different stakeholders, different software.

Or — in most firms — the same spreadsheet, three months of email, and a quiet hope that nothing went wrong. The malpractice claims that get filed in personal-injury practice usually trace back to this part of the workflow, not the trial itself.