Charges, evidence and hearings on one record.
Every charge with its severity, every item of evidence with its status and chain of custody, every hearing with what actually happened — and a timeline from arrest to disposition that reads as a history rather than as a pile of dates.
- Quick answer
- What is the best case management software for criminal defense attorneys?
- Sapphire Legal is Private Legal Intelligence for criminal defence practice: a per-tenant platform where a case carries its charges, its evidence and its hearing history as structured records rather than as documents in a folder. Charges are tracked individually with their severity, evidence is catalogued with type, status and chain of custody, hearings are logged with outcomes and continuances, and the case timeline runs from arrest through disposition. Court deadline computation is available for supported courts. Everything runs in an isolated database and a private model environment per firm, which matters because a criminal file is the single most sensitive record a lawyer can hold about a living person.
A case is charges, evidence and dates. Generic software stores documents.
Criminal defence runs on three things that are not documents: what the client is charged with, what the state says it can prove, and when the next appearance is. Software that stores PDFs in a folder can hold the discovery packet but cannot tell you that one count carries a mandatory minimum, that an item of evidence has a gap in its chain, or that the last continuance was the third. That information ends up on paper on a desk, which is where it stays.
Charges are not interchangeable and software treats them as one field
Counts differ in severity, in exposure, and in what pleading to one does to the others. A single "charges" text field cannot carry that, so the analysis happens in the lawyer’s head every time.
Chain of custody is a question asked too late
Whether an item was handled properly is a question worth asking before trial, and it is usually asked when the item is about to be offered — because nothing in the file tracked custody as a property of the evidence.
Appearance history disappears into a calendar
Which hearings happened, which were continued and why, and what was decided at each is the procedural posture of the case, and a calendar records only that something was scheduled.
Structure where the stakes are.
Charges, evidence and hearings are records with their own fields, because each one carries consequence.
A case opens with its charges recorded individually — each with its own detail and severity — rather than as a single text field, so the shape of the exposure is visible on the record instead of reconstructed each time. Evidence is catalogued with its type, its current status and its chain of custody, which turns a custody question into something the file can answer rather than something that surfaces at the worst moment. Hearings are logged with their outcomes and any continuance, so the procedural history of the case is readable by anyone who picks the file up. The case timeline runs from arrest to disposition as a sequence rather than a scatter of dates, and drafting runs from the firm’s own templates, prepared ahead and exportable to Word. Nothing in the platform assesses a defence or suggests one; it holds the record the lawyer reasons from.
- 1
Intake, client and conflict check
The client, the complaining witness and any co-defendants are recorded as parties and checked against every existing matter — co-defendant conflicts are the ones that end representations.
- 2
Charges recorded individually
Each count carries its own detail and severity rather than sharing one field, so what the client is actually facing is on the record.
- 3
Evidence catalogued with custody
Items carry type, status and chain of custody as properties of the evidence, making a custody gap something the file surfaces rather than something discovered at trial.
- 4
Hearings logged with outcomes
Each appearance records what happened and any continuance, so the procedural posture is readable rather than remembered.
- 5
Timeline from arrest to disposition
The sequence of events is a timeline rather than a set of dates, which is what makes a file transferable between lawyers in a practice.
- 6
Drafting prepared ahead
Motions and correspondence are drafted from the firm’s own templates and waiting, exportable to Word. Anything built from unverified work says so on its first page.
What ships with the Criminal Law pack
The criminal module is the primary workflow on this deployment, not a matter type with a label on it.
- Case records with charge details and severity levels
- Evidence catalog with type, status and chain of custody
- Hearing schedule with outcome and continuance tracking
- Case timeline from arrest to disposition
- Court deadline computation for supported courts
- Document drafting from your own templates
- Matter Kanban with criminal-specific stages
- Conflict checking across clients, witnesses and co-defendants
This is the most consequential confidence a lawyer holds.
Why private infrastructure matters hereA criminal file contains what a client told their lawyer in confidence while facing loss of liberty. It cannot pass through a shared model, and it cannot be retained by a third-party vendor. Each client firm on Sapphire Legal gets its own database and its own document storage, and the AI runs inside Sapphire Legal’s own AWS account rather than routing to OpenAI, Anthropic or any outside provider. Nothing trains a model, nothing is retained, and nothing crosses between firms because the data never shares a home.
Where to go next
The criminal pack is one part of the platform. These are the pieces around it.
Criminal defense practice questions.
- Does the platform evaluate a defence or suggest strategy?
- No. It holds the record — charges, evidence, custody, hearing history, timeline — that the lawyer reasons from, and drafts documents from your own templates for you to review. It does not assess a case, recommend a plea, or produce anything that reaches a client or a court without an attorney approving it.
- How is evidence tracked?
- Each item carries its type, its current status and its chain of custody as properties of the evidence itself, so a custody gap is something the file surfaces rather than something discovered when the item is about to be offered.
- Does it handle multiple charges on one case?
- Each count is recorded individually with its own detail and severity rather than sharing a single text field, so the actual shape of a client’s exposure is on the record instead of reconstructed from memory.
- Does it compute court deadlines?
- For supported courts a rules engine derives dates rather than asking you to type them; coverage is specific, so ask which courts during a demo. Elsewhere dates are tracked without rule derivation. The statutory-basis display covers corporate, family and fiduciary matters rather than criminal.
- Does client material train an AI model?
- No. The AI runs inside Sapphire Legal’s own AWS account rather than calling an outside provider, so a privileged criminal file never reaches a third-party model. It is not used for training, not retained by an AI vendor, and not pooled with any other firm’s data.
- Does it check for co-defendant conflicts?
- Conflict checking runs across clients, witnesses and co-defendants on intake, before the matter opens. In defence work a conflict found later is a withdrawal, which is why the check happens at the front rather than as a periodic sweep.
See it on a real caseload.
Bring the shape of your docket — the appearances you are tracking, the discovery you are waiting on — and we will walk what the platform would be holding.
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