Case Study: Enterprise Litigation Platform | Silicon Development Skip to main content

Case Study · LegalTech / FinTech

Enterprise Litigation Platform

7 engineers. ~2 years. Regulated litigation workflows for major US banks.

A litigation management platform serving major financial institutions needed more engineering capacity than the internal team could provide. The work touched PII, regulated financial data, and legal processes where mistakes have real consequences. Silicon Development embedded a 7-person team for approximately two years. The company was later acquired.

Engagement

~2 years

Embedded in the engineering org

Team size

7

Engineers, QA, PM

Velocity increase

50%+

Measured by sprint burndown

Outcome

Acquired

By a larger legal tech firm

What the team needed

The platform managed the full lifecycle of mass-litigation matters for major banks: intake, data scrubbing, statute of limitations calculations, document generation, service of process, settlements, and compliance reporting. Each client institution had its own workflow configurations and compliance requirements.

The internal team could not keep pace with feature development, compliance work, and client-specific builds the business demanded. The platform handled PII and regulated financial data. Errors in statute of limitations calculations or document generation have legal consequences for the bank clients.

They needed engineers who could understand litigation workflows, handle sensitive data correctly, and ship against client deadlines. Not a separate team running its own process. Engineers inside the existing org.

Stack

Backend

Ruby on Rails

Search

Elasticsearch

Infrastructure

AWS (KMS, SFTP)

Integrations

DocuSign, EDI, physical mail, skip trace

What Silicon Development built

The platform that served major financial institutions in production throughout the engagement.

Workflow engine

Configurable litigation workflow system that moved matters through suit prep, service of process, default judgment, and settlement. Admin tooling let operators configure steps and automated actions without developer involvement. Replaced a manual configuration process.

Document automation

PDF generation with templates supporting form fields, line numbers, footers, and merge operations. Batch uploads via ZIP and SFTP. Document tagging, archiving, and bulk operations for court filing and service packets.

PII redaction

Automated identification and masking of SSNs, account numbers, and sensitive data across uploaded documents and system logs. Required for compliance when handling financial institution client data.

Settlement processing

Full settlement workflow with e-signature integration. Contact management, payment tracking, contract generation, and automated matter progression after debtor signature.

External integrations

Process server EDI for job submissions and charge imports. Analytics platform for matter import/export. Physical mail generation and tracking. Skip trace for debtor location with failover. SFTP automation for file exchange.

Security and compliance

PII encryption at rest. Cloud KMS for secret management. IP whitelisting per client instance. Audit logging with user identification on all actions. Statute of limitations calculator with tolling date management. Code scanner remediation to zero violations.

What changed for the client

Engineering velocity (burndown) increased by 50%+ during the engagement

Platform served major financial institutions in production throughout, handling regulated litigation data

Workflow admin tooling replaced manual configuration and became the primary operational interface

PII redaction met financial institution compliance requirements

Client CEO referred SD to his investors' portfolio companies for additional engineering work

Company was later acquired by a larger legal technology firm

What this shows about the model

The technical lead carried a client email address and worked inside the engineering org for two years. That is the level of embedding the client needed.

The work touched PII, financial data, and legal processes where errors have real consequences. The team handled that from day one.

The client's board described SD as "a key partner to the company" and referred SD to their investors unprompted.

Engineering velocity increased by 50%+ and the company was eventually acquired. The team contributed to both.

Regulated work, real ownership, measurable outcomes

PII redaction, compliance workflows, and litigation tooling for major banks. Built by engineers embedded in the client org for two years.