For small firms running estates, guardianship & everything else
Every matter traced in one workspace.
Deadlines, documents, work queues, clients, hearings, time, and billing — in one file per matter, grouped by the practice areas you actually work in. Deep enough for estate administration and guardianship; general enough for the litigation, family, and real-estate files sitting next to them.
Then it does the parts you keep redoing: your opening checklist applied in one click, a case chronology assembled as you work, and a warning when two hearings land on the same morning.
14-day free trial · No card required
- Encrypted in transit and at rest
- Your data is never sold
- You control every share link
Estate of J. Whitfield
OpenDocket 2026-PR-00814 · CA · Executor
$418k
Assets
3
Beneficiaries
2
Open items
- Creditor claim period ends3d overdue
- Inventory & appraisement duedue in 12d
- First accounting filedDone
Illustrative example — not a real client's data
Why a spreadsheet stops working
The deadlines that carry real liability
Creditor claim windows
Miss the window and the estate can stay exposed to claims that should have been time-barred.
Inventory & accounting filings
Courts don't send reminders. A late filing is a court appearance you didn't need to have.
Ten estates, ten timelines
Past a handful of open matters, a spreadsheet stops being able to tell you what actually needs attention this week.
What Luminous Social actually does
Organized the same way it sits inside every matter. The estate and guardianship books go deepest — that is where this started — and every other file gets the same spine.
A matter for any practice area
Litigation, family, real estate, immigration, PI — open a file with the court, docket number, opposing party, and your client’s role. It gets the same deadlines, work list, documents, time, and billing as an estate.
Grouped by area of law
Pick the areas you work in when you sign up. Your matters, your sidebar, and your reports group around them instead of one flat list of files.
Your firm’s own numbers
Deadlines met versus missed, work outstanding, time billed against time logged, invoice aging, and trust balances — read back to you from the records you already keep.
Workflows you apply in one click
Save your standard opening checklist once — with your own day offsets, assignees, and categories — then apply it to any new file and watch nine steps land already spread across the calendar. Four ready-made ones ship to edit.
A case chronology, built as you work
Every hearing, deadline, document, note, time entry, and invoice on one axis in date order. Filter it, search it, print it, or copy it as CSV for an exhibit. The document litigators otherwise rebuild in Word before every hearing.
Collisions caught before they arrive
Two hearings the same day, a court date on a Saturday, an unusually heavy day — flagged on your calendar and your home page. We tell you what collides; we never tell you when a deadline moves.
Client updates drafted from the file
“Where are we on my file?” answered from the matter’s own dates, ready to edit and send over your signature. It carries dates only — never task titles or notes, because work product does not belong in a client’s inbox by accident.
Budgets, and files that have gone quiet
Fee and expense budgets tracked against what is actually logged, so you know before the write-off. Plus every open matter with nothing logged for three weeks — because neglect, not error, is what most complaints are about.
Retainers that tell you when they run low
Set a floor per client and the trust ledger says when a balance falls under it, while asking for a top-up is still a routine email rather than an awkward one.
Deadlines & calendar
Add a deadline once, mark it done when it is done. A calendar view rolls up every open estate’s next date in one place.
Work queue
File to-dos across every matter — death certificates, estate accounts, notices, first visits — separate from dates owed to the court.
Document checklists
Track what has been requested, received, and filed — letters, statements, deeds — and see every matter’s checklist in one place.
Asset inventory
Log real property, accounts, and personal property with estimated values — the running total a court inventory needs.
Working drafts you can print
Inventory, informal accounting, time, and the guardianship contact log — print or CSV from the same records you already keep.
Timers for every matter you touch
Start a clock when you pick up a file, start another when a call pulls you into a different one — every timer keeps running until you stop it.
Notice log
A dated record of what you sent — certified mail, email, publication — against interested parties and beneficiaries.
Creditor claims
Log every claim filed against the estate, its amount, and its status — pending, allowed, disputed, or paid.
Hearings
Court dates for estates and guardianship matters, with location, judge, and outcome — in the same calendar as filing deadlines.
Estate bank accounts
Checking, savings, brokerage — a register per account, with a running balance the informal accounting can actually use.
Simple estate ledger
Income, expenses, and distributions — optionally tagged to an estate account — with net-on-hand calculated automatically.
Time & billing
Log billable hours against a matter, mark them invoiced, and export a firm-wide time rollup when you sit down to bill.
Client trust ledger
Retainers held in trust, tracked per client and separate from the estate’s own money — with a flag the moment one runs negative.
Contacts
Clients, potential clients, and vendors, kept separately from the matters you run. Address, referral source, and notes about the relationship.
Beneficiary tracking
Names, contact info, distribution shares, and who has been formally notified — one list per estate, not a side notebook.
Contact log
A dated record of every call, email, and meeting with each contact — there if you ever need to reconstruct what happened.
Statute of limitations watch list
A firm-wide list of limitations dates, sorted soonest-first and flagged inside 90 days. You enter every date.
Date calculator
Add or subtract days, weeks, months, or years from a trigger date, skipping weekends or a list of dates you supply.
Legal holds
Track preservation notices — who they went to, what they cover, and whether they’ve been acknowledged.
New-matter checklist
Conflict check, engagement letter, retainer, insurer notice — a quick compliance pass before real work starts.
License & CLE tracking
Log your own continuing legal education hours against whatever requirement applies to you — personal, not firm-wide.
Trust account reconciliation
Reconcile the trust account against the bank statement and every client sub-ledger, and get flagged the moment one client’s balance goes negative.
Engagement letters
Every fee agreement in one list — arrangement, rate, scope — surfacing the ones you sent and never got back signed.
File retention schedule
Closed files, the retention period you set for each, and when one becomes eligible for destruction. Legal holds outrank the schedule.
Luminous Social organizes the deadlines, figures, and records you enter — it does not tell you what your state's probate code requires or provide legal or accounting advice. Every date and figure is entered by you, the licensed professional handling the estate.
How a file moves through it
01
Open the matter
Estate of the decedent, or guardianship / conservatorship of the protected person. State, county, case number, and your role.
02
Put the file on the board
Deadlines, a work list, documents, inventory, claims, ledger, hearings, time, and the contact log — whatever this matter actually needs.
03
Print the working draft
Inventory, informal accounting, time, and care-log reports pull from the same records. Confirm against source documents before you file.
Second practice area
Guardianship and conservatorship sit next to your estates
Hearings, fiduciary bond, court deadlines, documents, a contact log with the protected person, and billable time — the same workspace, a different matter type. Share a read-only view with co-guardians or family without handing them the whole firm file.
- Hearings & court deadlines
- Fiduciary bond tracking
- Contact log with the protected person
- Billable time
- Read-only share with co-guardians
Every practice area
Eleven tools that don't care what you practice
Limitations dates, trust reconciliation, engagement letters, retention schedules — the firm-wide obligations that land on every lawyer regardless of the work. They sit above the matter file and cover every matter.
To be straight about scope: estates and guardianship / conservatorship are the deepest books here — inventory, creditor claims, beneficiaries, accountings. Every other practice area opens as a general matter with the same deadlines, work list, documents, time, and billing, minus the probate-specific tabs. No practice area gets an invented statutory clock.
- Statute of limitations watch list
- Trust account reconciliation
- Engagement letters & fee agreements
- File retention schedule
- Legal holds
- Conflict check
- New-matter checklist
- Client trust ledger
- Client communication log
- Date calculator
- License & CLE tracking
Encrypted in transit and at rest
Your records are protected the same way whether you are opening a file or printing a draft.
Your data is never sold
No client list, no estate figure, no beneficiary record is ever shared for marketing purposes.
You control every share link
Every read-only link you send to a co-fiduciary or family member can be revoked whenever you choose.
Luminous Social organizes the deadlines, figures, and records you enter — it does not tell you what your state's probate code requires or provide legal or accounting advice. Every date and figure is entered by you, the licensed professional handling the estate.
Simple, transparent pricing
14-day free trial on every plan. No card required to start.
Solo
For a solo practitioner keeping every open matter on track.
$75/mo
- Up to 10 open matters, any area of law
- Deadlines, hearings, tasks, and a case chronology
- Documents, notes, and document import
- Time, expenses, invoices, and budgets
- Trust ledger & reconciliation
- Email support
Practice
For a small practice sharing one set of matters.
$149/mo
- Up to 30 open matters
- Up to 3 team members
- Everything in Solo
- Reusable workflows and custom fields
- Client intake form and client status updates
- Engagement letters & file retention schedule
Firm
For firms running a higher volume across several practice areas.
$249/mo
- Up to 100 open matters
- Unlimited team members
- Everything in Practice
- Firm-wide performance, time & trust rollups
- Days-not-billed and quiet-file detection
- Priority email support
Enterprise
For larger firms with unlimited estates, custom onboarding, and dedicated support.
Questions firms actually ask
Is this legal advice or a court filing system?
No. Luminous Social organizes the dates, figures, and records you enter. It does not calculate statutory deadlines, generate court forms, or tell you what your state requires.
Who is it for?
Small firms and solos running more than a handful of open matters — estate lawyers, professional fiduciaries, and court-appointed guardians first, and the litigation, family, real-estate, or immigration files sitting alongside them.
Does it handle practice areas other than probate?
Yes. Anything that is not an estate or a guardianship opens as a general matter — court, docket number, opposing party, your client’s role — and gets the same deadlines, work list, documents, contacts, time, and billing. The probate-specific tabs (inventory, creditor claims, beneficiaries) simply do not appear on it.
Can I share a file with a co-fiduciary or family member?
Yes. Each estate or guardianship matter can get a read-only link that you can revoke. You control every share.
Do you encode my state’s creditor-claim window?
No, on purpose. Those clocks vary by state and sometimes by county. A wrong number is a liability problem. You enter every date.
What happens when my trial ends?
Your existing matters stay put and stay readable. Opening new matters requires a Solo, Practice, or Firm plan. Team members start on Practice.
Bring your open matters in today
Set up your first estate in a couple of minutes — no credit card required for the trial.
Start free trial