Your client sends from their phone. It lands in your case folder.
Follow one case from the first invite to the day it closes: what you do, what your client sees, and where every file ends up.
Step 1 · Your client joins
One email from your firm, and your client is in.
Maya Ellis has just hired your firm in a dispute with her landlord. You open her case and write the first message: please send the lease and photos of the notice. All you need is her email address.
Maya gets one email from your firm, in the responsible attorney's name. She taps the link on her phone, the app installs, and your message is the first thing she sees. She adds the photos and sends. No account, no password, no website login.
Step 2 · You send
You send inside the case, not over email.
A few weeks in, you send Maya a settlement draft to review. You write the note, attach the file, and send. She reads it and answers in the same thread.
Before you send, the top of the conversation shows who will read it, each by name and role. Only your firm can add to that list. When you attach, you see this case's files and nothing from your other matters.
Each case is a secure channel between your firm and your client: what you send there reaches the people on the case, and no one else.
Step 3 · It arrives
When your client sends, the app tells you which case.
You're away from your desk when Maya sends the draft back with her changes. The app on your phone shows the case, her name, and that files arrived, and nothing else. One tap opens it in the case.
Nothing lands in your inbox. When you send, Maya gets the same notice, and you see that it was delivered.
Step 4 · It's filed
Open the case folder and the file is already there.
Back at your desk, you open the Ellis folder on your firm's drive. Everything the two of you have exchanged is already in it: the lease, the photos, Maya's marked-up draft. Nothing waited in an inbox to be moved.
It's an ordinary folder, wherever your firm already keeps its files: Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, or a plain folder on your computer. One folder per case for the whole team, laid out the same way, so the fortieth looks like the first.
Maya has a folder of her own, holding only what passed between you.
Step 5 · You find it
One search of the case, not three inboxes.
Four months in, a partner asks: did Maya send back the settlement draft, and did we get it? You search the case once. Up come her message, the record of when she sent it and that it arrived, and the draft itself, found by the words inside it.
The search runs on your own computer, not on our servers.
Everything you and your client exchange lives in one place, so you find anything in seconds, months in.
Photos and scans
Photos, screenshots, and scans become searchable.
Some of what Maya has is not a document: a phone photo of the landlord's letter, a screenshot of their text messages, a scanned form. A search can't read a picture.
Pick the files that matter, one or several, and Kacti makes a text version of each. Now a search for "late fee" finds the letter and the texts, and each file carries a label saying what it is.
The text is made by AI, only from the files you pick. What you leave out, it never sees.
AI agents
Your AI agent works inside the case.
Use the AI tool your firm already has, or Kacti's own agent. Either one works where the case is. It reads the photos and scans Maya sent, puts each one in its place in the case file, and drafts your reply asking for the page that's missing.
You choose when it works, and on which files and conversations. Nothing goes to Maya until you approve it.
In an email inbox, an AI agent has to dig past newsletters, spam, and forty other matters to find Maya. Here it starts inside the Ellis case: her messages, her files, and the people on the case, already in order.
Privacy
Private from us.
Messages and files are encrypted before they leave your device. We can't read them, and once they're delivered they're gone from our side.
AI is the one exception, and only when you use it. You choose which files and conversations it reads. Kacti's AI works under a zero-retention agreement: nothing it reads is stored or reused. An AI tool of your own works under your firm's agreement with that provider.
The case file stays with each of you: your firm's folder on your drive, Maya's on hers, both readable without us. When the Ellis case closes, nothing is deleted. Both folders stay where they are, yours with or without Kacti.
Questions firms ask
What if there is more than one person on the client's side?
Add each of them to the case, a spouse or a business partner, with the same one-email invite. Each person gets their own access. Only your firm can add someone, and everyone on the case sees who is on it.
Do we stop using email?
With your clients, yes. That conversation moves into Kacti. Email stays for everyone else: opposing counsel, the court, vendors. When a document from them belongs in the case, add it to the case folder and the search covers it too.
Does this replace our practice management software?
No. Kacti handles the conversation with your client and the files that come with it. The case folder is an ordinary folder on your own drive, so it works alongside the tools you already use.
What happens when someone leaves the case?
Your firm removes them. From then on, nothing new reaches them. The case file still shows what they received before they left.
Can we use it without the AI?
Yes. AI is optional, and you choose when to use it and on which files and conversations. Sending, filing, and search all work without it.
Can we use our own AI tools on the case file?
Yes, two ways. Connect your firm's AI tool to Kacti, or use Kacti's own agent, and it works inside the case. Or point any tool at the case file, an ordinary folder on your own drive. Either way, the choice is your firm's.
Can the AI send something to a client on its own?
No. It drafts, and a person at your firm approves before anything is sent.
Use Kacti early, and help shape it.
We're inviting a few law firms to use Kacti early as design partners: lawyers and paralegals whose feedback shapes what we build. If that sounds like your firm, talk to us.