Practice story
A commercial panel and the lawyers who refer to it
This story blends experiences from several Practice-tier panels. No firm or panel brand is named. Think of a four-mediator commercial practice in a capital city, receiving regular referrals from litigation teams who want status without chasing the mediator by phone.
General information only, not legal advice, mediation advice, or a substitute for professional judgment. Neutly is administrative software for mediator practices; it does not host live video or select court neutrals. Mediators and lawyers remain responsible for their work.
This page is an anonymised composite for illustration only. It is not a client testimonial, case study with verified results, or a guarantee of outcomes for your practice.
Updated
The panel before software coherence
Each mediator had a loyal referrer list, personal calendar habits, and slightly different fee wording. Coordinators forwarded emails. Lawyers learned which inbox to use—a brand strength that did not scale.
Commercial referrals demanded proof of progress: briefs received, fees cleared, session date locked. Partners asked juniors “where is mediation up to?” and juniors asked the coordinator, who asked the mediator.
Practice booking without losing personal relationships
They launched a practice-wide booking page for the firm website while keeping personal slugs in partner-specific referral templates. Corporate clients booked “the panel”; repeat litigation referrals still booked “their” mediator.
Co-mediator matters became easier to staff—two mediating seats on one file instead of duplicate email threads.
Lawyer portal: what firms actually used
Referring firms cared about three signals: date confirmed, both sides paid or scheduled to pay, and brief uploaded. They did not need party intake narratives or caucus notes—and the portal correctly withheld those.
Brief upload reduced attachment sprawl in inboxes. Juniors stopped downloading sensitive PDFs to local desktops out of habit—though firm policy still mattered more than software.
Fee splits and clerk handoff
Commercial matters often split fees 50/50 with tight billing cycles. Clerks sent split requests from the matter, tracked partial payments, and pushed paid lines to accounting when Xero was connected.
Each mediator still had their own Connect account for their share of mediating work—platform subscription stayed one Practice invoice.
Coordinator role on the ground
Coordinators lived in enquiries and Calendar—converting holds, nudging consent, not editing governance integrations. When a referral was wrong-fit, they declined before a file opened, which kept lawyer portal noise down.
Failed email alerts caught typos in firm contact lists early—small feature, large trust impact with institutional referrers.
What did not change (honest limits)
The practice did not become a court registry. High-volume nominating body workflows stayed sales conversations about Panel tier—not something toggled on overnight.
Live mediation remained on external video platforms. Funder portals and deep insurer automation were out of scope. Lawyers still ran their own matter management on CounselOS or equivalents—the portal was read-only progress, not dual entry.
When referral volume crossed the four-mediator cap, they hired clerks before hiring a fifth mediator—software limit matched commercial reality.
- No neutral selection or marketplace ranking
- Party accounts still link-based—no firm logins for disputants
- Directory listing helped discoverability but did not replace relationships