Running a law firm on Free software
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A small English technology law firm has operated almost entirely on free and open-source software for about five years, and its 2026 setup shows that this approach remains practical in daily legal work. On the desktop, Debian with GNOME runs on a ThinkPad; documents are produced in LibreOffice or written in Markdown and converted with Pandoc and Typst. Thunderbird and terminal-based tools handle email and scheduling, while Evince and Xournal++ support PDF reading and markup. Other regular tools include Firefox, Vimwiki, Espanso, Cryptomator, Bitwarden, Paperless-ngx and Reveal.js for presentations. The preference for keyboard-driven programs reflects comfort with the terminal and a desire for fewer distractions. The author notes a flaky laptop connection, calendar-invitation trouble in Thunderbird and dissatisfaction with Mozilla’s direction, but these issues have not undermined the overall workflow.
Most business services are self-hosted, including email, time tracking, invoicing, matter management, monitoring, security scanning, backups, DNS and the firm’s policy wiki. A notable change was replacing Nextcloud with Syncthing for file synchronization and Radicale for calendars and contacts; both have proved more satisfactory. Jitsi and CryptPad were retired because they saw too little use, while Signal is offered for calls and collaborative document editing is not provided. The website and blog use lightweight static-site tools, and encrypted forms collect client onboarding information. The firm uses no AI tools, and a Pixel phone running GrapheneOS is the best fit found after trying alternatives. Clients’ use of Microsoft and Apple software has caused no problems, suggesting a largely open-source practice can still work smoothly with conventional tools.
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