About Per Stirpes
Built inside a working practice.
Per Stirpes exists because I married an estate planning attorney and couldn’t stop watching how the work actually got done.
Matt Schmeisser, Founder & CEO
The origin
One firm’s real work, not a market study.
My wife’s firm ran on capable tools that barely knew each other: a CRM for leads, a practice manager that started at engagement, Word for drafting, an e-sign tool, a payments account. Zapier kept them on speaking terms, but no webhook or sync ever got the work to line up the way a matter actually moves. I build software for a living, and even I couldn’t wire it together well enough. The same client’s name typed into five systems, the same signature chased across three inboxes. None of it was anyone’s fault. Nobody builds software for a single practice area, so firms assemble what exists and pay for the seams.
I had spent fifteen years building software for a domain with the same shape: excise tax, where the rules are unforgiving, the filings recur, and the data has to be right the first time. From where I sat, estate planning didn’t need another general tool. It needed one platform that knew the whole engagement, built close enough to a real firm to get the details right.
So I built it inside one. Every workflow in Per Stirpes was drawn from live matters at her firm, argued over at our kitchen table, and put back into practice the next week. The firm is not a design partner we recruited. It’s the reason the product exists.
Not a first platform
Compliance software is the only kind I’ve built.
I’ve been the practitioner: an IRS enrolled agent and licensed customs broker who spent a decade filing other people’s federal and state returns before building the software that filed them.
Per Stirpes is my second vertical platform. The first tracked fuel tax licensing for a niche most people have never heard of. I built it alone, revenue doubled every year, and a national compliance company acquired it in 2023. I stayed on as vice president of technology, responsible for the engineering organization, SOC 1 and SOC 2 programs, and the platforms that had acquired mine.
That history is here for one reason. When a firm moves its practice onto a young platform, it is really asking whether the platform will be run like it matters.
Schmeisser, Matt
Founder & CEO · regulated-domain software
- Practitioner · IRS enrolled agent; a decade filing excise returns2011
- Founder · a fuel-tax compliance platform, built solo; revenue doubled yearly2018
- Acquired · by a national compliance company2023
- VP of Technology · SOC 1 & 2; the acquirer’s platforms2023
- Per Stirpes · built inside a working practicenow
A career, told the way the platform tells a matter.
What that means for your firm
- Nothing ships untested by a firm
- Every feature survives real matters at a working practice before it reaches yours. If it doesn’t hold up in the room where the work happens, it doesn’t ship.
- The attorney decides
- The platform prepares, tracks, and orchestrates. Judgment stays with counsel. We are software people who respect the line, and we are not a law firm.
- Run like it matters
- Audit trails, tenant isolation, document custody, and the operational discipline of someone who has carried SOC 1 and SOC 2 programs before. Privileged work demands it.
The name
Per stirpes: by the branch. Software built down one branch, not across a hundred.
If estate planning is your practice, I’d like to show you what we built.
Demos are given by me, on real workflows, and I reply within one business day.