Claim in Hand was built by one person who had been through it, for everyone who cannot afford a solicitor.
Hi, my name is Martin and I built Claim in Hand.
I built it because I have five children and a very busy work life, and a few years ago I found myself buried in contracts and court cases all at the same time. The whole way through, one thought kept going round in my head. Why is there no proper software to help normal people take someone to court?
In some of my early cases we paid out a lot of money to barristers and solicitors for something that, once you actually understood it, was fairly simple. That never sat right with me.
I was nervous before my first hearing, so I did the only thing I could think of to get over it. I made myself familiar with it. On my days off I would sit in different court rooms and just watch and listen. I spoke to people while I was there and I tried to understand how it all worked.
On the day itself I was calm enough, and I was lucky to have a kind judge who could see I was not a solicitor and was patient with me. The problem was my paperwork. It was not court ready. It was hard to read, it was not organised well, and even though I had a really strong point I just could not get it across. I lost. I lost because the other side had a solicitor and I did not.
That stayed with me for months. It felt so unfair that if you have money these things are no problem, and if you do not, you are on the back foot before you even start. Money should not be the thing that decides who gets a fair hearing. We should all stand on the same ground.
I have ADHD and autism, and I have always felt the difference between what is right and what is wrong very strongly. If I am honest that is part of why I ended up in court in the first place, because people do not always keep their word anymore.
The case that finally pushed me to build this was a website developer. We paid thousands of pounds for a website for our business and he simply never delivered, and we lost the money. Instead of paying someone else, I sat down over Christmas and built our first website myself. It gave me a feel for how these things are made and a small understanding of code. I had just been diagnosed with ADHD around that time, and once I started I could not stop. It turned into a bit of an obsession. I made an agreement with my partner that I would step back from everything else for a while and really learn how software works, so that we could use it in our own businesses.
During that time we took the developer to court. I remembered how badly I had struggled before to put my evidence together in a way a judge could actually follow. Then one morning I was sitting on the hill in my garden with a coffee, and the idea just landed. What if I built software that made court filing and civil claims simple to understand and simple to do, at a price that ordinary people could actually afford.
That was it. Fire in my stomach. I started building, sometimes eighteen to twenty hours a day, pouring everything I had learned over the last few years into something that would be genuinely easy to use, and that would help with the exact parts I knew people got stuck on.
That is how Claim in Hand started. I built it to help anyone who cannot afford a solicitor to put together court ready paperwork, and to understand everything there is to know about going to court.
Here is what is inside, in plain English.
We lay the whole journey out for you, from working out your dispute right through to after the hearing, so you always know what stage you are at and what is coming next.
You tell us what happened in your own words, and we help turn it into the kind of clear, ordered account a court expects.
We help you write the formal letter that often gets you paid before you even reach court.
We help you set your claim out clearly, so a judge can follow exactly what you are asking for and why.
Every document you might need, explained simply, with the ones we can prepare for you ready to go.
A simple tick list so you walk in with everything you need and nothing forgotten.
A place to look up the official court forms and the rules, checked against proper sources rather than guesswork.
All the physical bits in one place, the binders, dividers, sleeves and ready made kits, so your bundle looks the part.
When you are ready, our team can build your bundle, print it, copy it, post it, and keep an eye on your dates so nothing slips.
If you want a professional to look over your paperwork and tell you what they think, we can arrange that too.
A place to talk to other people going through the same thing, so you do not have to feel like you are on your own.
After a lot of requests from the people using it, we have decided to keep bringing out more and more ways to help with your case, while keeping it affordable at the same time.
I want to be honest with you about why this is not free.
I have five children and more than one business. I am usually up at five in the morning, and most days I am running on about three hours sleep. There is no way I could keep this going on my own.
I pay people to look after the code and to handle the admin side, so that it actually works, so it is not constantly breaking, and so we can keep adding the things people ask for. What you pay covers their wages and leaves a small amount for me to keep building.
This was never meant to be a hugely profitable business. Almost everything goes straight back in, so the service stays good and keeps getting better.
My promise is a simple one. To help as many ordinary people as I can to stand up for themselves, without needing deep pockets to do it.
Martin, founder of Claim in Hand
If you are stuck, or you just want to talk it through with a real person, you can call us and book a time to go through it together.
Contact details are being finalised — use the contact form below.