Solution
London, UK – At the close of 2024, Tricostar received a substantial Innovate UK grant to develop TCM Edge, an advanced AI case management system for legal departments and private sector law firms across the UK. The product will launch 1st quarter 2026.
Built within Microsoft’s O365 environment, TCM Edge leverages Copilot, Dataverse, Power Automate, and Power BI, fully integrated with Billables AI for automated time recording and Colligo for email and document management. This seamless integration ensures secure operation within each client’s Microsoft tenant.
All Tricostar clients have already committed to migrating from TCM to TCM Edge during 2026 to unlock the full benefits of AI-driven case management.
On average fee earner administration interaction with their traditional case management system is reduced by up to 50% while a wide range of manual tasks will be automated by Copilot.
TCM Edge will start at £60 per user per month, to include all the AI features of the integrated MS Copilot productivity agents.
Tricostar is bringing secure, simple to implement, the most affordable and leading-edge AI case management to the legal market.
Executive Quote
“TCM Edge represents a transformative step for legal operations. By combining AI automation with Microsoft’s secure ecosystem, we’re delivering efficiency, compliance, and innovation at scale,” said James Lawler, Managing Director at Tricostar.
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For more information visit www.tricostar.com or contact james.lawler@tricostar.com.
Tricostar Software Ltd
Tricostar has been bringing innovative legals software and technology solutions to the legal market since 1988. Tricostar produced the first web-based legal case management application in 2005 and started hosting these solutions from 2010 and now hosted in a fully integrated Microsoft Azure environment since 2017.
Up to recently these solutions have focused on the public sector but in the past couple of years our innovative solutions have started to be deployed in the private sector with our case management solution, AI time recording and email management.
The Legal Wire spoke with Founder and Director of Strategy at Tricostar, Jeff Lawler, to find out what set their proposal apart, how Copilot-driven workflows change day-to-day legal work, and why decades of public-sector experience are now shaping Tricostar’s push into the private law firm market.
TLW: You’ve received Innovate UK funding to launch TCM Edge, a fully AI-integrated case management platform. What aspects of the grant process or your proposal do you think helped position Tricostar as a standout for this support?
Jeff: “The key themes which Innovate UK look for is significant increase in productivity, efficiency, reduction of training and support.
Internal metrics indicated a saving of up to 50% of time spent on fee earners and staff on matter administration. Lawyers no longer having to leave the O365 environment to run their matters – creating efficiency and reducing the training curve. There is unprecedented integration with O365.
We had already launched two AI-enabled products, which seamlessly integrate with TCM Edge:
- The first was an AI time recording product, which aims to reduce the time spent on time recording to as little as 1 hour per month and increase billable time captured as result by up to 30%.
- The second is an email management and governance tool, which for a 50 fee earner firm has been confirmed to save the team up to 240 hours per month on email management and filing.”
TLW: TCM Edge brings together Microsoft Copilot, Power Platform tools, and integrations like Billables AI and Colligo. For legal teams used to legacy systems, what’s the most immediate and tangible shift they’ll feel when using TCM Edge in live matters?
Jeff: “The first immediate difference will be the time saved by legal teams by predicting next steps (pro-active approach).
Copilot agents built in the product turn matter administration into a pro-active environment rather than what is a mainly reactive one in traditional systems.
Traditional workflow is perceived as an end-to-end to process. Copilot agents break traditional workflow down into snippets, which can be used by the fee earner as required, and are faster to implement and offer more flexibility.
With Billables AI, legal teams can reduce the act of time recording to as little as 1-hour per month as time is captured automatically, regardless of what application they’re using – they just look at and authorise the time sheet produced each day. [This] results in more billable hours captured, and less forgotten time.”
TLW: Tricostar has a long history serving the public sector and is now expanding into private law firms. What lessons from your public sector work are shaping how you approach this next phase of growth?
Jeff: “I started my career in the private legal sector in 1978.
One of the main differences in public and private sector is SRA Accounts Rules compliance. SRA Accounts Rules compliance is now managed and available out-the-box in TCM Edge, which means firms can now choose whichever accounts system they want e.g. QuickBooks, Xero etc. which for the mid-market represents huge potential savings and complexities.
All our public sector clients have committed to move to TCM Edge in 2026. It has been our experience that forward thinking public sector have been well ahead in terms of their adoption of Microsoft Office 365, specifically in the use of SharePoint and Teams. Whilst private sector have yet to come to the realisation of the huge cost savings available by working in this way.
The system is built on Office 365 and Power Apps with Copilot embedded, providing strict security, robust guardrails, and data residency within the client’s own environment, ensuring sensitive legal data is protected and not used to train external AI models. Since 2010, we have hosted public sector legal case management systems for major government departments, where security requirements are paramount.
Lawyers hate any kind of change, especially technological. Our decision to use the O365 apps they already use day-to-day was quite purposeful to reduce the burden on training and change management. The system has been designed to be quick to implement – automatically update through Microsoft’s ecosystem – reducing training requirements, as user interface is familiar.
Public sector is a much more cost-sensitive market than private sector and we have operated almost exclusively here for 38+ years. We’ve designed a product to meet public sector constraints on spending for at least the next 5 years, which now because of AI and SRA Accounts Rules compliance, can be offered to the private sector, at some 50-70% less than your typical legal CMS/PMS supplier.
The core system will be £60/€70/$80 per user per month, which includes Microsoft licensing (for those with a O365 account), the Copilot agents, and email automation from Colligo. The only addition to the core system will be Billables AI time recording at $99 pupm.”
