How to choose a legal app development company

Most shortlists look identical on paper

Search for a legal mobile app development company and you get a hundred firms claiming privilege-aware architecture, integration fluency and award-winning design. The claims are cheap. The evidence is not.

Wve Labs has been building digital products since 2015, with mobile as our deepest area of expertise for more than a decade, for organizations including Sony, Honda, Guardian, Marriott and USC. Below is the diligence we would run if we were sitting on your side of the table.

Eight questions that separate the field

Ask these of every legal app development company on your list and compare the answers side by side. Vague answers are answers.

• Show me the privilege boundary in an architecture you shipped — which services see matter data, and which never do?
• Which vendors in your stack sign a data processing agreement, and can I see the list?
• How do you handle release rules for a filing so nothing reaches a client before the attorney signs off?
• What is your integration path into Clio, NetDocuments or iManage, and what happens when that interface is down?
• Who owns the code, the pipelines and the App Store listings at the end of the engagement?
• What did your last legal launch measure in month three, not week one?
• How do you evidence WCAG 2.2 AA, not just claim it?
• Which named engineers work on this, and are they employees?

Team shape beats headcount

A legal product needs product strategy, design and engineering answering to one plan. Firms that hand off between three separate vendors lose the matter nuance in the gaps — and matter nuance is the whole product.

Serious legal engagements at Wve Labs start around $25,000, which typically covers a scoped discovery and a working, testable slice of the real product rather than a slide deck.