What it does
Letters give a practice one place to write client correspondence and produce it as a branded PDF on the case.
You author a letter template once. Inside a matter, you pick that template, connect it to the actual people involved, and generate the PDF. Matter fills in the details from the record itself, so the letter is not assembled by copying names, dates, and reference numbers out of the file and into a word processor.
Where it shows up in the workflow
Letter templates live in the Templates area of the workspace. Every template is versioned, so an edit keeps the earlier revision rather than overwriting the only copy.
Authoring starts with subjects rather than fields. You declare who and what the letter refers to, giving each subject a role name and a type: a contact, an organisation, an agent, the case, or the firm. The fields you can insert are then whatever that type can actually resolve. A field cannot be offered to you unless the renderer is able to fill it, because the picker and the renderer read the same schema.
On a case, the Letters tab is where correspondence is created. You choose a template, bind each of its subjects to a real party on the case, and review before the letter opens.
What staff see
The letter workbench shows the body you are editing and a readiness panel beside it. The panel lists what is still unresolved, such as a subject with no party bound to it or a value nobody has filled in, and you can preview the rendered PDF inline before committing to it.
If you have written a “tailor before sending” prompt into the template, it is surfaced here too, with a button that jumps to the block it belongs to. Those prompts are advisory. They do not block generation, but you are asked to confirm if you generate a letter that still has one showing.
Generating produces a PDF and files it into the case document group you choose. From there it is an ordinary case document, so it inherits that group’s access, and it can be attached to an outgoing email from the case.
Letterhead
Letterhead is set up once, in Practice Settings, and wraps every letter the practice generates. Templates own the body of the letter. The letterhead owns everything around it.
A practice can choose a preset, set the page size and margins, pick the typeface and body text size, and set the colours, either inherited from the client portal branding or specific to letters. You can show the practice name, the portal wordmark, or upload your own mark. Header and footer regions can be switched on for the first page, the following pages, or both, and their content lines mix literal text with fields that fill from the case. Page numbering can be plain or in the “3 of 7” form.
A live preview renders a short letter, a long letter, and a multi-page letter, so you can see how the header and footer behave when the content actually runs over a page.
Domain examples
Migration practices can use letters for advice on a client’s status and expiry dates, submissions that accompany an application, and letters that record what a client was told and when.
Tax and legal teams can use the same flow for engagement letters, advice, and matter closure correspondence, all on the practice’s own letterhead.
Limits and availability
Letters generate PDFs. There is no Word or DOCX output.
Matter does not yet ship prepared starter letters. You author your own templates today. A library of reviewed starter letters is being worked on and is not available yet.
Electronic signature is a separate capability and is not part of Letters today.