The question nobody asks out loud. Answered anyway.
A lawyer who doesn't even use TimeNet Law wrote to me with a suggestion. He said the website makes it clear that I'm independent, that I'm the developer, that I answer the phone. And that for some firms, that reads as a risk: what happens to us if something happens to him?
He called it the silent bounce. The buyer who closes the tab without ever telling you why. He's right that it exists, and he's right that the answer belongs here, in plain language, without the marketing polish.
So here it is.
TimeNet Law stores everything in ordinary files on your own Mac. Your matters, your time, your invoices, your trust ledger. Not on my servers. Not on anyone's servers. If I vanished tomorrow, your data would still be sitting on your hard drive exactly where you left it.
"That is the opposite of what happens when a cloud vendor goes away. Their servers are your data. When they go dark, so does it."
You can open the folder in Finder right now and look at it. That's not a promise. That's how it's built.
TimeNet Law is a native Mac application. It doesn't need me alive to open on Monday morning. It doesn't need my website to be up. It checks in for updates when it can, and if it can't reach my server, nothing changes.
A valid license is treated as valid. The only way TimeNet Law ever disables itself is if it can reach timenetlaw.com and finds that specific license on a blocklist. If the server is gone, that check never happens, and the software keeps working. The same is true for Oasis: the AI models run on your Mac, so there is no dependency to lose.
A cloud product stops working the day the servers stop. TimeNet Law keeps working until macOS itself moves on, which is measured in years.
I'm the developer, and this website doesn't hide that. But it has never been just me. Sarah has been deeply involved in design, testing, and support for years. If I can't do this anymore, she takes over operations the day it happens: support, sales, licensing, all of it. She knows this software, and she knows you.
Here is the commitment. If I can no longer maintain TimeNet Law, then within six months one of two things happens:
Notice what that means. A successor only satisfies the plan while they're actively maintaining it. If TimeNet Law were ever sold to someone who let it die, the release triggers anyway. There is no version of this where you're left holding software nobody can touch.
And this isn't a promise that depends on anyone remembering to keep it. I'm building a dead man's switch: every few months it checks that I'm still here. If I stop answering, Sarah is notified and given the window to bring on a successor. If nobody steps in, the source code publishes itself.
The switch is being built now. This page will say so, plainly, the day it goes live.
I'll be straight about the trade-off, because you deserve to hear it from me. TimeNet Law's risk is one person's health. That's real, and everything above is my answer to it.
Your other options have a bus too. Theirs is next quarter's spreadsheet. TimeSolv, Rocket Matter, CosmoLex, and Tabs3 are owned by the same private equity firm. Ask their customers how the acquisitions went: the price increases, the sunset notices, the "migration paths." One of those risks is a possibility. The other is a business model.
"I never want anyone who uses TimeNet Law to feel like they're in a hostage situation. I built it to be the escape hatch. That has to include an escape hatch from me."
— Perry
Questions about any of this? Email me. I answer. →
Why independence, ownership, and local data are the whole point.