Your docket is unpaid inventory with no clock.
Clients ask how long. Your balance sheet asks the same question. Tertius is one clock for both seats — honest ranges a client can hear, and a view of when your open matters free cash and attention for the firm. Timing and how cases end, only: the merits stay yours, and strategy research stays in the tools you already use.
One matter from the same clock — the product is the whole docket.
One slow case can own
the next three years.
On contingency, the firm finances every case it takes — payroll, experts, the credit line, all advanced against a payday with no date on it. Which means every optimistic calendar is a cash decision in disguise: the matter that runs long doesn't just cost sleep, it quietly decides the hires you don't make and the cases you can't take. And the one question that governs all of it — when does this end? — is the one nobody in the building can answer.
Not because anyone lacks judgment. Because nobody gave the shelf a clock.
What Monday looks like with a clock on the shelf.
Import your open matters once. Every Monday after that, the firm sees the same three things — without anyone building a spreadsheet.
Each open matter, on a band
Remaining time as a range — a fast tenth, a typical middle, a slow tenth — conditioned on how long each matter has already run. Never a single date.
When half the shelf frees
The month by which half your open matters have resolved and paid — with a cautious version beside the typical one, so the plan survives a slow year.
What's aging out of band
Matters that have outlived most cases like them get flagged early — while there's still a decision to make, not after the year is already gone.
This isn't a gadget invented for lawyers — litigation funders and insurers run the same discipline on their portfolios. It's the standard treatment for money that's waiting on courts; a contingency shelf is exactly that.
Ranges a client can hear — and you can stand behind.
The other seat of the same clock. A number a client hears as a promise is a liability; this one is built so it can't be heard that way.
Say it in ranges
“Cases like yours typically resolve in about two years. One in ten wraps inside fifteen months; one in ten runs past four.” The forecast is built to be said exactly that way — a range with a middle, never a promise.
Hand them the page
The client-ready page carries the uncertainty language and disclaimers on its face — estimates, not promises; timing, not merits. The document manages the expectation so you don't have to re-litigate it later.
Re-run it as the case ages
A case two years in isn't the case you filed. Re-run the range at six and twelve months and it updates to where the matter actually stands — so check-ins get a current number, not a stale one.
The self-serve taste — one matter, two minutes
Illustrative sample. Run a real matter free at /lookup; the full client-ready report is $149. Same clock the caseload view runs on — this is the on-ramp, not the whole product.
Another year of carry, priced.
Every settlement conversation is secretly a timing conversation: what another year of experts, payroll, and interest costs against what waiting might add. You already know your economics. What's been missing is the other input — how much clock is realistically left, and when matters like this one tend to resolve. Hold or settle stays entirely your call. Now it's a call with a denominator.
The clock, not the case.
Tertius is
- How long matters like yours run, as honest ranges
- How they tend to end — settled, dismissed, judgment — as base rates
- When your caseload frees cash and attention
- Client-safe language for all of the above
Tertius isn't
- Judge, motion, or opposing-counsel win rates
- Damages models or merits predictions
- An opinion on whether you'll win
- A date. Nobody honestly has one; we won't pretend to.
Do strategy research in the tools you already use. Use Tertius for the clock.
Checkable,
not asserted.
You don't put a number in front of a client or an adjuster because a vendor said so. The method and the track record are public — see how it works and the published benchmarks — and the fastest check of all is your own filing cabinet.
- Graded out of sample — scored on cases it never saw, and on your own closed matters if you ask it to.
- Error and coverage are published, not asserted — including where the ranges are still weak.
- Every figure is a range with a middle. It will not hand you a date, because nobody honestly has one.
- U.S. federal civil timing and disposition only — scope stated plainly, on every page.
The caseload, or one matter first.
Put your caseload on the clock
Import matters you've already closed and let the clock grade itself against your own record — blind. Then put the open matters on it: remaining ranges, when the shelf frees, what's aging out of band. Firm rules ship as one-click templates — “flag anything likely to outlive the credit line” — and every view carries the verdict. On the Fund plan, a weekly brief emails the whole picture to the partners who never log in.
Try one matter first
Run a matter free in about two minutes. The full client-ready report — range, disposition mix, dismissal risk, cited comparables — is $149. Same clock, one matter at a time.
Your judgment on the merits.
Tertius on the clock.
Honest ranges for the clients. A timeline for the cash carrying them. One clock, both seats — and it grades itself on your own closed matters first.
Tertius forecasts timing and disposition, not merits or damages, and is not legal advice. U.S. federal civil cases only.