Working example, built for Blackhurst Budd Solicitors

The update your matter file doesn't send until someone asks

A Trustpilot reviewer, John Stephens, wrote that the firm "only seems to give updates when asked otherwise you will not know where proceedings are up to." Another reviewer, Eric Leung, described going over two years without a response or update on whether a Land Registry property-ownership registration had even been submitted after his purchase completed. A third reviewer, Frema, described a completion delayed a week because the assigned solicitor was on holiday that day and no one had flagged it. All three describe the same gap: nothing tells a client automatically when their matter moves, or doesn't move, they only find out by chasing the firm themselves.

What's real: the three Trustpilot reviews quoted above are public. The UK Legal Ombudsman's own published decision data also lists one upheld decision against Blackhurst Budd Limited, Property/conveyancing, decided 05/05/2026, with complaint types recorded as "Delay, Failure to keep informed." A direct review of blackhurstbudd.co.uk found no client portal, case-status login, or CRM-facing feature anywhere on the site, only a phone number, a contact form, and a general inbox email, so this would introduce visibility that doesn't exist today, not add to something already there. Nationally-marketed UK legal-tech products such as Access Legal's client portal, TrackMyCase, Perfect Portal, Hoowla, and InTouch all sell exactly this kind of automatic case-progress visibility to law firms today, confirming this is a proven, already-validated fix.

What's illustrative: the matters, client names, addresses, and solicitor/agent names below are a fictional sample, not real Blackhurst Budd clients or matters. Nothing here sends a real email or text. This shows exactly what a client, and anyone else on the matter, would receive automatically at each milestone. A real build connects to whatever field a fee earner already updates and sends through an actual email/SMS service.

Fee earner view: update a matter's status

Sample matters, fictional

What the client (and anyone else on the matter) sees

What I'd flag before you roll this out anywhere else

Nothing here sends a real email or text. This demo only shows what a client and any co-executor, lender, or agent on the matter would receive. A real version needs an actual email/SMS service (for example SendGrid or Twilio) wired to whatever field your fee earners already update to mark a matter's stage.
This introduces visibility your site doesn't have today, it doesn't sit beside an existing tool. Direct review of blackhurstbudd.co.uk found no client portal, case-status login, or CRM-facing feature of any kind, so this closes the exact gap the Trustpilot reviews describe rather than adding a second way to check status.
The milestone stages shown for a residential conveyancing matter and for an estate matter are typical stages for that kind of work, not copied from your firm's internal case-management process. A real build should confirm the exact stages your team already tracks and the field they update to move a matter between them.
Worth a specific conversation before this goes live: what a status update can safely say. Since this touches active legal matters, a real build should keep the message content to a status label and a plain next step (as shown below), not matter substance, so nothing privileged or confidential goes out over an unencrypted text.
The Ombudsman decision and Trustpilot reviews above are real and cited directly, this is a reasonable response to the documented pattern, not a guarantee nothing is ever delayed. A Land Registry application can still take time to process. What changes is whether the client, and whoever else is on the matter, hears about it automatically instead of finding out only by chasing the firm, or not at all.