How a Cyprus Law Firm Runs Matters, Time and Compliance in One System
The Firm
The firm is a full-service legal practice whose work splits into two very different halves. On one side sits recurring, calendar-driven work: annual returns, registered office and company secretarial services, residency permit renewals, and the corporate administration that keeps a client's structure in good standing. On the other sits reactive work: litigation with court dates, transactions with completion deadlines, and advisory matters that arrive without warning.
Both halves have the same operational problem. Someone has to know, at any moment, which matters are open, who owns them, what has been done this week, and what of that has been billed.
The Challenge
Before ZenWorkflow, that answer was assembled by hand. Matters were tracked in a shared spreadsheet, time was recorded in personal notes and typed up at month end, invoices were drafted in Word from whatever the fee earner could remember, and AML files sat in folders on a shared drive, separate from the client they belonged to.
The symptoms were familiar:
- No single view of everything open for a client, so partners asked around before client calls
- Time recalled at month end rather than recorded daily, which meant written-off hours nobody could defend
- Disbursements — court fees, filing fees, translations, couriers — paid by the firm and then forgotten at invoicing
- Recurring deadlines tracked client by client, dependent on one person keeping a list current
- AML and KYC files that were complete, but not visibly complete, and reviews that fell due without anyone knowing
- New joiners learning the firm's way of working by asking colleagues rather than following a process
The Approach
The firm moved in one step rather than running two systems in parallel. Its existing client list, contacts and company relationships were imported first, so the system was worth opening on day one, and historic billing came with it so client balances and statements were correct immediately.
Services were then defined once at the firm level and assigned per client, which is what makes the recurring side of the practice predictable: the system knows which clients receive registered office services, which have annual filings due, and which hold permits that need renewal. Everything the firm does for a client is recorded against that client rather than held in someone's head.
How the Firm Works Today
Every matter is a workflow
Each matter — a company incorporation, a claim, a conveyance, a permit application — is a workflow created from a firm template, carrying the same stages, checklist and fields every time. Recurring corporate administration work is generated in bulk for the year ahead instead of being created one client at a time.
Partners filter by client, practice area, assignee or status to see what is open. Fee earners work from their own assigned list, and sub-statuses show whether a matter is genuinely progressing or waiting on the client, on counsel, or on a registry.
Time is captured where the work happens
Fee earners record time against a client, a service and the specific matter, on the day the work happens. Timesheets are submitted weekly and approved by a supervising partner. Because every entry is tied to a matter, work in progress is something the firm can look at rather than estimate — and the conversation about writing time off happens before the invoice, not after.
Billing starts from the work, not from memory
Invoices are raised from recorded time, completed matters and fixed-fee services. Hourly work, agreed fixed fees and disbursements all flow into the same document, with line descriptions drawn from the matter itself so the invoice reads the way the client expects it to. Unbilled time and unbilled disbursements stay visible until they are invoiced or deliberately written off.
AML and KYC sit on the client record
As an obliged entity, the firm has to be able to produce a complete client file on request. Risk assessments, identity and address verification, source-of-funds records, PEP and sanctions screening and adverse-media checks are completed against the client record, alongside the matters and documents they relate to. Review dates are scheduled by the system and approved inside it, so periodic reviews arrive as work rather than as a discovery during an inspection.
The practice runs on one calendar
Leave requests, approvals and public holidays sit in the same system as the matters. When a fee earner is out, it is visible next to the work that depends on them, which is the point at which cover actually gets arranged.
What Changed
- One client record.** Matters, contacts, time, invoices, disbursements and AML files hang off a single client rather than five locations.
- Deadlines are structural.** Every recurring filing and renewal exists as a workflow with a due date, so nothing depends on a spreadsheet being current.
- Work in progress is visible.** Recorded time and completed matters stay on the books until they are billed or written off on purpose.
- The file is audit-ready.** Compliance records live with the client and carry their own review schedule.
- The firm's method is in the templates.** New joiners follow the same steps as everyone else from their first matter.
What Comes Next
The firm is extending its use of the platform into client-facing document collection and firm-wide reporting, so that the picture partners get of the practice is drawn from the same records the fee earners work in every day.
If your practice is balancing recurring filings against reactive matters, with time and compliance to account for on both, [book a demo](/book-demo/) and we will show you how it works.