The client portal

The client portal is a place of the client's own, separate from the console: its people sign in with their own password and an emailed code, and see only what the firm deliberately shares with them. Nothing appears in it because it belongs to the matter. Each matter's Client portal tab is where the firm runs it.

Give the client's people access

On the matter, open Client portal, then Access, and choose Give access. Pick the person from the client's own contacts where they are on it, or give their name and how to invite them: by email, or by mobile number for someone with no email. Choose what they may do:

• Owner: everything, and they may give their own colleagues access within what they hold.
• Director: everything.
• Finance: bills, payments and messages.
• Legal: the matter, documents, dates, signing and messages, but not the bills.
• Chosen one by one: pick each part yourself.

Then choose this matter alone or every matter of the client. Giving every matter needs portal management at the firm's scope. The person is sent an invitation to set a password, by email or by text; it stays open for the firm's set number of days and can be sent again.

Someone invited by mobile number signs in with their number, and their codes come by text. Until they confirm an email, the things the firm chose in Settings, Client portal stay closed to them (by default downloading documents, paying bills, signing and inviting colleagues), and the portal tells them why on each.

Each row says who gave the access: someone at the firm, or the client's own owner. End their access asks why and signs them out at once where it was their last access.

Share what the client should see

Documents, dates and bills reach the portal only when shared. On a document, a diary entry or a bill, choose Share to the client portal. For a document, say whether they may keep a copy and whether they must confirm they have read it. A bill goes only to the client it is addressed to. The client is emailed that something is waiting, never what it says.

Shared on the matter's portal tab lists every shared record with what the client did with it: opened, downloaded, acknowledged, or answered a date. Stop sharing takes it out of the portal at once; the share is kept as the record of what was shown.

Tell the client how the matter stands

Updates holds the case updates the firm publishes, in words for the client. The matter's internal stage is never shown. The responsible lawyer is reminded when a client has had no update for the firm's set number of days. An update published in error is withdrawn, saying why.

Messages, files and meetings

Messages holds the conversations with the client, each filed on the matter's correspondence too. A client's question about a bill is kept with that bill. Files the client sends wait in quarantine, are scanned, and join the matter's documents only when someone accepts them; one sent back says why. Every conversation carries the firm's standing notice that messages are not formal instructions.

Meetings holds the meetings the client asked for against the lawyer's open diary. Confirm one of the times offered (it goes in the diary and back to the client) or decline it saying why.

Questionnaires and signatures

A questionnaire sent on the matter to the client, or to one of their people, also waits in the portal under Documents, Questionnaires, for anyone given the Forms capability. Answering asks for a fresh emailed code and opens the same questionnaire page as the emailed link, so nothing is answered twice. Documents to sign wait under To sign the same way. Both appear on the client's home page until they are done.

What the client can do with money

The client sees the bills shared with them, what is left to pay, payments and receipts, credit notes, payment plans, their statement of account, the money held for them in the client account, and the firm's requests for funds. Paying asks for a fresh emailed code and opens the same payment page as the bill's printed link.

The client's own account

Each of the client's people has an account page in the portal. They can add, change or remove their own photo and cover, choose which portal emails they receive, and change their password.

Their name, email and phone are held by the firm. Ask to change sends a request to the firm's Approvals inbox, where someone who manages portal access on one of their matters approves it or refuses it with a reason; the person is told either way. A new name changes at once. A new email or phone changes only once the person enters the code sent to it, so an approval never hands the account to an address its owner does not hold. Where the person is on the client's contacts, their contact record changes with it.

Security is where they turn on an authenticator app: the portal then asks for a code from the app at sign-in in place of an emailed or texted one, and gives ten recovery codes, each good once, for a lost phone. Turning it off or making new codes takes their password and a current code. Sessions lists the devices they are signed in on, and any but the one in hand can be signed out after confirming. The bell in the portal's top bar opens their latest notices, each leading to what it is about, with the way to every notice below them.

Read it as the client does

On the portal tab's Overview, choose one of the client's people and Read as them: the matter exactly as they see it. Nothing is marked read or recorded as theirs. Activity lists what the client's people did in the portal and when, as the firm's proof against "I never received it".