For solo & small-firm general practice

Practice management, without the bloat.

Built by a 25-year software engineer and pro se litigant, alongside a paralegal beginning practice this fall.

No spam. We'll email you when there's a seat.
What it does

Four things, done well. Nothing else.

Specta is built around the work you actually do, not the work a software company thinks you should be doing.

I.

Court watcher

Daily scans of court portals across SC, NC, GA, TX, IN, OH, TN, and federal. New filings, new orders, new entries on your dockets, straight to your inbox before 8 AM. Stop refreshing PACER and the state portals.

II.

Deadlines that won't slip

Per-event reminders that start at the right number of days, repeat daily, and don't stop until you mark them handled. Statutes, discovery cutoffs, financing contingencies, closing dates. One calendar, one source of truth.

III.

Document binder

One place per matter for every PDF, image, and note. Drag-and-drop uploads, organized chronologically, searchable, accessible from anywhere. Built for matters with thirty documents, not for a million-document discovery sprint.

IV.

Matter timeline

An automatic chronology of every matter, generated as you work. Court actions, uploaded documents, deadlines, parties. Print it as an exhibit, share it with the client, use it to remember what the hell happened in February.

Built by

A pro se software engineer and a paralegal who close on Fridays.

Chris is a 25-year software engineer who has spent the better part of a decade representing himself in matters across three states, learning the docket conventions of each portal the hard way. Kate is finishing paralegal school in Charlotte and begins practicing this fall in real estate, probate, and estate administration.

Specta is what we're building for the way our practice runs: refined every week against Chris's pro se docket, designed for Kate's matters from day one. It's not enterprise legal-tech wearing a smaller hat. It's a small tool we needed, made shareable.

Chris & Kate Ballance · Charlotte, NC
A short list

What Specta is not.

  • i.Not MyCase. Not Clio. No per-seat-per-month, no calendar bloat, no marketing-and-billing module you don't want.
  • ii.Not a CRM. No leads, no pipelines, no client portals, no automation flows. Specta starts when there's a matter; it ends when the matter closes.
  • iii.Not a time-tracker. Your billable hours go wherever you already track them. We are not interested in being your timesheet.
  • iv.Not a giant. One workspace per practice. No multi-firm tenancy, no white-label, no SSO admin console. For now.

It's a workspace for the matter in front of you.

Practice management, without the bloat.

We're opening Specta to a small first cohort of solo and small-firm attorneys and paralegals. Add your email and we'll reach out when there's a seat.

No spam. We'll email you when there's a seat.