We work where your legal questions actually appear

Email and attachments are not the only interface. They're often the worst one.

The default legal engagement model is: send an email, attach a file, wait three days, receive a PDF. That model turns every question into a production, buries context in threads, and makes the lawyer inaccessible unless you're willing to start a new billable engagement just to ask something.

Fences is built around where legal questions actually happen: in Slack when a product manager asks "can we use this data?", in a shared doc when a founder marks up a term sheet, in a text thread when a deal is moving fast.

Supported channels

We work in the tools your company already uses. We also help stand up dedicated channels when appropriate—Slack workspaces, dedicated email addresses, or secure messaging threads configured with the right confidentiality and retention posture.

Slack and Microsoft Teams — Fast triage, routing, status checks, and playbook lookups without thread confusion. Questions route to a matter record with owners and next actions. Not every message becomes a billable event—the system is designed to absorb routine communication.

Email — Still the right tool for formal notices, external counterparties, long-form context, and document delivery. Email threads should feed the matter record, not become it.

Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 — We work where your documents live. Redlines in Drive, comments in Docs, contract review in Word. No mandatory format conversion; we adapt to your toolchain.

Dedicated client channels — For many engagements, we stand up a purpose-built Slack channel or dedicated email address configured for legal communication. Appropriate retention, confidentiality expectations defined in writing, owned by the engagement.

Text and urgent routing — Used carefully, with scope and retention expectations set at onboarding. Useful for time-sensitive coordination; not a substitute for structured communication.

The command line — For engineering-facing legal questions, we understand the tools your technical team uses. Legal operations can integrate with your existing development and deployment workflows.

Why channel architecture matters legally

The channel isn't just a convenience—it's part of the legal record. A Slack message, a comment in a shared document, a text message, or a voice note can become evidence. The question isn't only "can we communicate here?" It's whether the right controls, confidentiality expectations, and privilege posture are in place for the type of communication happening in that channel.

We work through this with each client at onboarding. Channel setup is part of the engagement structure, not an afterthought. The goal is that communication happens where it's natural—without inadvertently creating discoverable records or waiving protections.

What we don't ask you to do

Change your tools. Learn new software. Adopt a client portal that nobody logs into. We meet you where you work. That's not a tagline—it's the operating model.

Collaborative by design—transparent by default

Lawyers have a transparency problem. Work disappears into a firm for weeks and comes back as a polished document. You pay for the intermediate steps without seeing them. Revisions happen you didn't ask for. Context gets rebuilt from scratch at the start of every engagement.

The opacity isn't accidental. It's a feature of a model where the deliverable is the output, not the process. When you can't see the work, you can't evaluate efficiency, catch wrong assumptions early, or participate in decisions while they're still decisions.

Fences is built for visibility at every step.

Iterative, not just final

If you want polished final documents—thoroughly reviewed, proofread, formatted, and delivered—we can do that. That's the floor, not the ceiling.

But we don't only deliver finals. We work iteratively. That means:

• Shared drafts you can see and comment on before they're done
• Redlines in progress, not just redlines delivered
• Decision records that show what was considered and why
• Visible reasoning, not invisible logic

The alternative—billing for revisions to a document you didn't know was being drafted—is not a feature of good legal service delivery. It's a consequence of opacity. We don't do it.

Visibility is structured, not noisy

Working visibly doesn't mean flooding your inbox. It means giving you the information you need, in the form you need it, when it matters.

Live document access — Shared drafts and redlines are available in real time. You don't need to request a status update to know where a contract stands.

Task notifications — Automatic alerts when documents are opened, edited, marked complete, or need your input. Structured signals with context, not noise.

Daily dashboard summaries — What changed, what's under review, what needs a decision, what's been delivered. Clearly labeled: lawyer-reviewed versus machine-generated. Those are not the same thing and they're never presented as if they are.

Chargeable and included time — Both visible in the same dashboard. No invoice surprises. If something counts against your monthly coverage or triggers an incremental fee, you see it before the bill arrives.

Payments that work for operators

Monthly ACH or bank transfer for coverage fees. Itemized invoices for incremental work. We understand that finance teams have requirements around approval workflows, accounting codes, and documentation. We'll work with yours.

If you want invoices, we produce them. If you prefer automatic ACH because your time is valuable, that works too.

Collaboration with accountability

Visibility doesn't mean chaos. Every workstream has an owner, a scope, and explicit gates for decisions that require lawyer review. The goal is that you always know: what the system has handled automatically, what a lawyer has reviewed and approved, and what needs your input before moving forward.

That's not a softer standard than traditional legal delivery. It's a higher one—because the accountability is explicit, not buried in billable-hour records.