Frequently Asked Questions

Tembo is an AI-native legal practice management platform that unifies matter management, trust accounting, billing, calendaring, document intelligence, and conflict checking into a single workspace. Built from the ground up with attorney-supervised AI at its core, Tembo replaces the patchwork of disconnected tools most firms rely on today.

Legacy platforms bolt AI onto decades-old architectures. Tembo was designed as an all-in-one legal workspace with trust accounting and AI woven into every layer — from intelligent matter intake to automated billing narratives. The result is fewer clicks, fewer errors, and dramatically less context-switching for attorneys and staff.

Tembo serves solo practitioners, small firms, and mid-size practices across all practice areas. Whether you handle litigation, transactional work, family law, immigration, or a mixed book of business, the platform adapts to your workflows. Multi-practice firms benefit especially from unified conflict checking and cross-matter visibility.

Every matter in Tembo is a living workspace that aggregates contacts, time entries, documents, trust balances, calendar events, and billing history in one view. Matters support custom statuses, practice-area tagging, responsible attorney assignment, and automated conflict screening at intake. You can track matters from initial consultation through closing and retention.

Yes. Tembo supports configurable matter templates and task checklists per practice area. A real estate closing and a personal injury case follow very different arcs — Tembo lets you define those arcs once and apply them consistently, so nothing falls through the cracks.

Tembo includes full three-way reconciliation trust accounting that meets bar requirements in all 50 states. You can manage multiple trust accounts, track per-client and per-matter balances, generate trust ledgers, and produce the reconciliation reports your state bar demands — all without a separate accounting tool.

The platform enforces guardrails at the transaction level: you cannot disburse more than a client’s available trust balance, and every deposit, withdrawal, and transfer is logged with an immutable audit trail. Real-time balance visibility and automated three-way reconciliation catch discrepancies before they become compliance issues.

Every AI-generated output in Tembo — whether it is a billing narrative, a document summary, or a conflict flag — is presented as a suggestion that an attorney reviews and approves before it takes effect. The AI accelerates work; the attorney retains judgment and control. No action is taken autonomously on client matters.

The copilot assists with drafting time entry narratives, summarizing uploaded documents, surfacing potential conflicts during matter intake, identifying overdue tasks, and generating first-draft invoice descriptions. It learns your firm’s conventions over time, so suggestions become more accurate the more you use the platform.

No. Tembo never uses your client data to train or fine-tune foundation models. All AI inference runs within isolated infrastructure built to SOC 2 standards. Your data remains yours — it is never shared across tenants or exposed to model training pipelines.

Tembo supports hourly, flat fee, contingency, retainer, and hybrid billing. You can assign different rate structures per matter, per timekeeper, or per client. The billing engine calculates totals, applies discounts or write-offs, and generates professional invoices — including LEDES format for clients that require it.

Yes. Tembo provides browser-based timers, quick-entry forms, and the AI copilot can suggest time entries based on your calendar and document activity. All time entries sync instantly across devices, so you can capture billable work whether you are at your desk, in court, or on the go.

Tembo includes a built-in legal calendar with support for court dates, deadlines, statute of limitations tracking, and recurring events. Events are linked to matters automatically, so your calendar and matter timeline stay in sync. You can also set cascading deadline rules — change a trial date and all dependent deadlines adjust.

Tembo supports two-way sync with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, so your legal deadlines appear alongside personal and firm-wide events. The sync is real-time, and Tembo distinguishes between firm-originated events and externally created ones to avoid duplicates.

Tembo runs automated conflict screens at matter intake and whenever new contacts are added. The system checks names, aliases, related entities, and corporate affiliations against your entire firm history. Potential conflicts are flagged with a confidence score and presented for attorney review — nothing is silently approved or dismissed.

Every matter has a dedicated document workspace where you can upload, organize, tag, and search files. The AI copilot can extract key terms, summarize lengthy documents, and auto-tag uploads by type. Full-text search works across all documents in your firm, scoped by your permissions and matter access.

Tembo uses straightforward per-user, per-month pricing with no hidden fees for storage, support, or trust accounting. We offer Solo, Team, and Firm tiers to match your size and needs. Visit our pricing page for current rates and to see what is included at each tier.

Yes. Every firm gets a 14-day free trial with full access to all features — including trust accounting, the AI copilot, and document intelligence. No credit card is required to start. If you need more time to evaluate, contact our team and we will extend your trial.

Tembo encrypts all data at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.3). The platform is built to SOC 2 Type II and ISO 47001 standards — both certifications are in progress — with isolated tenant databases, automated backups, and strict access controls. We conduct regular penetration testing and maintain a responsible disclosure program.

Yes, Tembo is multi-tenant with strict row-level security. Every database query is scoped to your organization. Other tenants cannot access, view, or infer anything about your data. This isolation is enforced at the database level, not just the application layer.

Yes. Tembo supports data subject access requests, right-to-erasure workflows, and consent tracking as required by GDPR. For legal data subject to bar-mandated retention periods, Tembo enforces those retention rules automatically and anonymizes records once the retention window closes — balancing privacy rights with professional obligations.

Tembo includes configurable retention policies that align with state bar rules for client files, billing records, trust accounting, and conflict data. Legal holds can be placed on matters involved in litigation, overriding standard retention schedules until the hold is lifted by authorized personnel.

Yes. Tembo provides guided migration tools for importing matters, contacts, time entries, and billing history from platforms like Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, and others. Our onboarding team handles the heavy lifting — most firms are fully migrated within two weeks with zero data loss.

Every plan includes email and in-app chat support with response times under four hours during business days. Team and Firm plans add priority support with one-hour response times and a dedicated onboarding specialist. We also maintain a knowledge base, video walkthroughs, and a community forum.

Yes. Every new firm receives a guided onboarding experience that covers account setup, data migration, trust accounting configuration, and team training. For larger firms, we offer custom training sessions tailored to your practice areas and workflows. Our goal is for your team to be self-sufficient within the first week.