Tell us a little bit about your company.
Law firms have a substantial burden when it comes to sending, collecting, and receiving documents. They need to get documents in and out of their office, but because they're law firms, they have privacy and security concerns. Often documents need to be requested from third parties, and they need to be paid for, charged, or tracked in various ways. All of this complicates what would otherwise be a fairly simple task of sending documents.
Tracking software is automation and centralization software that helps you complete these tasks efficiently. In doing so, we save you an enormous amount of staff time and the hard costs you would otherwise spend sending documents — and we bill everything as a transactional disbursement that you can cost-recover. We take staff time and turn it into a recoverable disbursement.
What makes your product or service a good fit for the legal sector?
We are software designed by people who worked in and ran law firms and medical offices, and we built it exclusively for Canadian lawyers and doctors. Our security, and everything we do, is built with lawyers' professional obligations and unique requirements in mind.
What's one recent success story or project you're especially proud of?
Later this year, we're launching a major visual and user interface redesign of our system, which we believe will further improve usability and time savings.
What are some common challenges you help law firms solve?
Everybody has not enough time — at the support staff level in particular, nobody has enough time. And when mistakes are made, things go missing, or things aren't done the way they should be, that only makes matters worse and can create real stress.
If you really think about it, law firms spend a surprising amount of time sending and receiving documents, often complicated by the other factors mentioned above. Because we can automate, centralize, and put guardrails around that process, we can return hours and hours every week to the average law clerk, legal assistant, or other support staff member — time they can then put toward more important, non-rote parts of a file, like client management.
Why did you choose to partner with TLOMA?
TLOMA is a great organization with tremendous membership across Ontario. Because we work exclusively with law firms — particularly those that care about efficiency and their own internal workings and procedures — TLOMA's membership is, by nature, a group of people interested in the management of a law office. Right away, that makes them people after our own heart: we also care about how law firms are run, and we want to help make them more efficient. That's exactly what we do.
What advice would you offer legal professionals navigating today's evolving workspace?
We want to stay humble here — it's not our place to give advice on how to practice law. But the belief that drives our company is that legal matters and the practice of law are only getting more complicated, and any task that doesn't directly drive results for your clients or your firm's bottom line is worth reducing the time spent on. That's what we help you do.
When you're not working, where would it find you?
We have a very diverse and wonderful group of people who work with us, with hobbies spanning the full spectrum — from Magic: The Gathering to sailing to travel.
Bonus: What's one trend you're watching closely in the legal industry?
Like everyone else in the industry, we're watching AI, especially as it relates to automation and non-revenue-producing tasks. But something we're particularly interested in is the wave of lawyers approaching retirement — how are firms ensuring continuity?
Bonus: How can TLOMA members connect with you?
If you want more information, the best thing you can do is visit our "Book a Call" page and schedule a 15-minute call with a senior member of our team who understands how law firms work. It's not a high-pressure sales pitch — it's a conversation to determine whether we'd be a good fit for you.
What's a common misconception?
We want to make this clear: when it comes to getting documents in and out of your office, we do it and can save you an enormous amount of time — but we don't store documents. We leave case management, accounting, and document storage to the software you already use. We're built to integrate with each of those.
What's the best compliment you've ever received from a client?
The best compliment we've ever received was at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several clients told us that if we kept operating, they could keep operating — and if we stopped, they'd have to stop too.
As a new partner with TLOMA, what are you most looking forward to?
Most of our sales come through referral, and most of our product is designed in partnership with our clients. Getting access to a new group of people to continue both of those conversations is valuable to us.
If you had a magic wand to instantly improve one thing in law firm operations, what would it be?
So many firms have great processes on paper that aren't consistently followed. If I had a magic wand, I'd want firms to have strong adherence to procedures that have been tested, approved, and agreed upon internally. This drives me nuts — not just in this business, but everywhere. If someone thinks there's a better way to do something, they should explain why, and if their way truly is better, the whole team should adopt it.
I saw this firsthand at a previous business. We had a closing checklist that was supposed to be followed every single time. One team member decided the last third of the checklist could be skipped, since it rarely seemed to apply. It worked fine — until the one time it mattered, and the oversight cost $11,000 in uncancelled IMEs (independent medical examinations). We didn't fire her; if anything, she became the person most diligent about following every checklist to the letter afterward. But it was a hard lesson.
If I could change one thing about law firm operations, it would be this: things that are done repeatedly should have a procedure or checklist, and it should be followed every single time.
David Swadden is the CEO and co-founder of Tracument, software designed to help Canadian law firms operate more efficiently, reduce administrative costs, and make better use of their teams’ time.
Drawing on his experience working in and running a law firm, David co-founded Tracument in 2013 to automate the repetitive, time-consuming work involved in sending, receiving, and requesting documents. Today, Tracument serves more than 1,900 clients across Canada.
