Most of a personal injury file is chasing paper. The client treats with four or five providers, and each one has records and a bill that you request, wait for and often request again. A health plan, Medicaid or Medicare may claim part of the recovery. Nothing can be valued until treatment ends. When the case finally settles, one check has to be split between the fee, the case costs, each lienholder, any unpaid provider and the client, to the cent, out of your trust account.
The software for this work has to be good at two things: keeping the record-and-bill chase in order for months, and getting the closing arithmetic exactly right.
What a personal injury firm needs from its software
A provider list that knows what is missing. For each treating provider you need the dates of treatment, when records and bills were requested, what came back and how much was billed. The total of those bills is the specials figure that goes into the demand, so a provider whose bills never arrived has to show up as a gap rather than quietly counting as zero.
Liens kept separate from bills. A lien is a claim on the recovery, and it is negotiated. You need the holder, the type, the amount claimed, the amount agreed and the letter that asked for the reduction.
A demand you can send without building it by hand. The letter, the records and the bills, bound together with an exhibit index.
A written closing statement. ABA Model Rule 1.5(c) requires a contingent fee agreement in a writing signed by the client, stating the percentage on settlement, trial or appeal, which expenses come out of the recovery and whether they come out before or after the fee is calculated. At the end of the matter the lawyer gives the client a written statement of the outcome showing the remittance to the client and how it was worked out. In practice that statement is your settlement sheet, so the math on it has to be right.
Trust handling for money other people claim. Settlement funds land in trust. Under Model Rule 1.15(e), when two or more people claim an interest in money you hold, the disputed part stays separate until the dispute is resolved, and the undisputed part goes out promptly. Your state’s version of both rules is the one that binds you.
What Coil does for personal injury firms
- Case facts and a stage board. Each PI matter carries the incident facts and moves through intake, treating, records, demand, negotiation, litigation, settled and closed, so you can see the whole caseload by where each case stands.
- Providers, records and bills. Record each treating provider and generate the records request and the billing request as letters filed on the matter. A chronology is built from the records.
- Liens with reduction letters. Medical, health plan, Medicare, Medicaid, ERISA, workers’ compensation and attorney liens, each with original and payable amounts. The reduction letter uses the reduced figure you propose.
- A demand package with bound exhibits. The letter, the documents behind it and an index, as one PDF on the matter.
- The settlement worksheet. Gross settlement, fee at the matter’s contingency percentage, case costs, open liens, unpaid provider balances and the net to the client. Costs default to the expenses that have not already been billed to the client, so a client is not charged twice for the same filing fee. A provider who holds a lien is paid through that lien, so its bill is not also counted on its own line. Only an owner or attorney can approve the worksheet.
- Disbursement into the trust ledger. Marking an approved worksheet disbursed writes a ledger row for the fee, each cost, each lien and provider payoff and the client’s net, dated no earlier than the day the settlement money is in trust. Coil’s trust ledger refuses anything that would take the client below zero.
- A standard PI task set and limitation dates. Apply the PI task list to a new matter without duplicating tasks if you apply it twice, and calendar the limitations date from the record.
- Discovery and depositions, as their own tools, for the cases that go into litigation.
Every PDF the PI module produces is marked as a draft for attorney review in its footer. Coil prepares the paper; a lawyer decides what goes out.
What Coil does not do yet
The AI assistant, which drafts a narrative demand in your own voice and summarizes a matter, is in Phase 2: built and in testing, not available today. Checking the dollar figures in a matter’s documents against the case record before a demand goes out is planned for Phase 3.
Coil does not connect to insurers, to Medicare or to any health plan. Lien and bill amounts are whatever you enter. It does not value cases or suggest a settlement range. Court rule sets are generic starters today, with real state and federal sets in Phase 2, and court e-filing is in Phase 3. Invoicing and online payments are in Phase 2 as well, which matters less on a contingency file but does matter if you also bill hourly work.
Where this leaves a PI practice
If your week is spent chasing records and your worst fear is a closing statement that is a few dollars off, Coil’s PI module is aimed squarely at that. It keeps the chase visible, does the closing arithmetic the same way every time and puts the result in the trust ledger only when a lawyer has signed off on it.
Questions
Can Coil work out the contingency fee and the client's net on a settlement?
Yes. The settlement worksheet takes the gross settlement, applies the contingency percentage set on the matter, subtracts the case costs you choose, open liens and unpaid provider balances, and shows the net to the client. The lines always add back to the gross, and the worksheet prints as a PDF.
Does the settlement post to trust by itself?
No. An owner or attorney has to approve the worksheet first, and then someone with trust permission marks it disbursed. Only then does Coil write one trust ledger row per payee against the client and matter, and the usual trust rules apply, including the refusal to take a client below zero.
Does Coil write the demand letter?
Coil builds the demand package today: the letter with the records and bills bound in as exhibits behind an index. Having the AI assistant draft the narrative of the demand is part of Phase 2, which is in testing and not available yet.
Can Coil track Medicare, Medicaid and health plan liens?
Yes, as liens on the matter, each with a type, the original amount, the amount you negotiated and a status, and Coil writes the reduction letter using the reduced figure. It does not fetch lien amounts from Medicare or any plan. You enter what the lienholder tells you.
Last checked October 28, 2026.