Running a law firm on Free software (2026 edition)

Decoded.legal, a small English law firm specializing in Internet, telecoms, and tech law, has been operating on Free software both for clients and internally since around five years ago. This includes email clients like Thunderbird and mutt, document production with LibreOffice Writer, pandoc, and typst, PDF handling with evince, Xournal++, PDFarranger, pdftk, and client-side encryption using Cryptomator.

The firm utilizes the Mastodon advanced web UI or TUI toot for the Fediverse, Bitwarden for password management, Markdown editor Apostrophe, label printing through a FOSS web UI for Brother label printers, and invoicing with InvoicePlane.

For case management, they use EspoCRM, while VPN connections are secured through WireGuard, with ansible scripts and PiVPN. The firm's website is a static site built via mkdocs and hosted on apache2. For personal use, a Pixel device running GrapheneOS is employed, as Android options do not meet their needs. Despite exploring various OSs and devices, GrapheneOS remains the most suitable choice for the firm's requirements.