Building a Client Portal Experience Clients Will Actually Use
A law firm client portal is a secure, authenticated space in which a firm and its clients exchange documents, messages, tasks, invoices and signatures in relation to a matter. Most firms that adopt one do so for sound reasons: to reduce the volume of sensitive material travelling by ordinary email, to give clients visibility of progress, and to relieve fee earners of repetitive status enquiries. Yet a large proportion of portals, once launched, sit largely unused. Clients continue to telephone, send attachments by email and message the attorney-at-law directly, and the portal becomes a place that only the firm's own staff remember to look at.
The reason is usually not technological. A portal is adopted when it is easier for the client to use it than to ignore it, and when the firm treats it as the primary channel rather than an optional extra. That requires decisions about what the portal is for, who within the client organisation uses it, how access is granted and withdrawn, what the firm commits to do within it, and how the firm responds when a client persistently bypasses it.
This article sets out a method for building a client portal experience that clients will actually use. It covers scope, onboarding, content design, confidentiality and professional obligations, internal workflow and measurement. It does not assume any particular software, and the points apply equally to a sole practitioner and to a mid-sized firm. Obligations concerning confidentiality, client money, data protection and communications differ between jurisdictions, and practitioners should apply the rules of their own regulator.
Decide what the portal is for
A portal that attempts to do everything tends to do nothing well. The first design decision is to identify the two or three tasks which the client genuinely needs to perform and which are currently inconvenient, and to build the portal around those. For most firms the candidates are well known.
Delivering documents to the client and receiving documents from the client, particularly identification documents, source of funds evidence and signed originals.
Obtaining signatures on engagement letters, powers of attorney, agreements and affidavits.
Viewing invoices and payment requests, and where the firm's rules permit, paying them.
Seeing a concise statement of where the matter stands and what is awaited from the client.
Exchanging messages that need to be kept with the matter record.
Each of these should be justified by a client benefit. If the principal justification is the firm's convenience, the portal will meet resistance. A client who is asked to log in to a separate system in order to read a message that could have been emailed will reasonably ask why. A client who is asked to log in to sign a twenty-page agreement without printing, scanning and posting it, or to upload a passport once rather than send it five times, will see the value at once.
Match the portal to the client type
Different clients make different demands. A corporate client with an in-house legal team may want matter-level visibility, document version control and the ability to add colleagues. An individual in a conveyancing or family matter may want a single list of what is outstanding and a way to upload documents from a telephone. A commercial client who instructs the firm intermittently may not use the portal often enough to remember a password. The firm should consider whether one design can serve all of these or whether different matter types need different default configurations, and should resist the temptation to impose a single workflow because it is administratively tidier.
Onboarding determines adoption
Adoption is largely settled in the first week of a retainer. If the first interaction with the portal is a confusing invitation email followed by a password reset loop, many clients will not return. Conversely, if the portal is introduced at the first meeting, the client is walked through a single task, and the engagement letter explains that documents and messages will be handled in the portal, most clients will follow the lead of the firm.
Build the portal into the engagement letter
The engagement letter is the natural place to establish the portal as the agreed channel. It can state that the firm will use the portal for the exchange of documents and substantive messages, that the client will be invited at the outset, that urgent matters may be raised by telephone but should be confirmed in the portal, and that the client is responsible for keeping login credentials confidential. It should also describe how the client may ask for an alternative arrangement, since some clients, for reasons of access, disability or limited connectivity, will not be able to use a portal and the firm should not exclude them from its services.
Make the first login useful
The first screen a client sees should contain something that matters to them: a task to complete, a document to read or a short welcome that states what happens next. An empty dashboard communicates that nothing is happening. A practical sequence is to send the invitation immediately after the engagement is confirmed, to ensure that the first item awaiting the client is a short and clearly worded request, such as completing a client information form, and to follow up by telephone or message if the invitation has not been accepted within a few days.
Design the content for clients, not for lawyers
Clients read portals differently from the way lawyers write file notes. Terms such as disbursements, undertakings, completion statements and case management conferences carry meaning for practitioners and obscure it for clients. The portal should present information in the order that the client needs it, in plain language and in a form that can be understood without a telephone call.
Three content principles are worth adopting.
State what is needed from the client, by when and why, in a single sentence. A request that reads "Please upload a certified copy of your passport by Friday so that we can complete identity verification" will be acted on; a request that reads "Further documents required" will not.
Show progress in stages rather than in technical detail. A short sequence, such as instructions received, drafting under way, awaiting your review, awaiting signature and completed, allows a client to see where the matter stands without legal interpretation.
Keep the history intact. Clients return to a portal to find something they were sent earlier. Documents should be named consistently, dated, and grouped so that a client can find the signed copy of an agreement without searching through drafts.
The firm should also decide what it will not place in the portal. Internal notes, privileged working papers, conflict check results and file-handling comments belong to the firm's own record and should be set to remain invisible to the client. Visibility settings should be reviewed for each matter type, since a document inadvertently made visible to a client, or to a second client on a joint matter, can create confidentiality and conflict problems.
Confidentiality, security and professional duties
A client portal is an instrument for discharging a duty of confidentiality, and it should be assessed in that light. Relevant considerations include who can access which matter, how access is granted, how it is removed when a client leaves or a retainer ends, and how the firm demonstrates that confidential material has been handled with care.
Authentication and access control
The firm should require individual log-in credentials for each client user rather than shared accounts, and should consider whether additional authentication measures are appropriate for sensitive matters. Where a corporate client has several authorised contacts, each should have a distinct account, so that actions can be attributed to individuals and so that access can be withdrawn when someone leaves the client's organisation. A firm that charges per user will often discourage this practice for cost reasons, which is one reason that pricing structure deserves attention when selecting software; a firm-wide pricing model that does not penalise the addition of users removes that disincentive.
Privilege and the duty of confidentiality
Moving privileged communications into a controlled portal can help to preserve confidentiality, but only if clients are advised not to share their login credentials, not to access the portal on devices controlled by their employer where the matter is adverse to the employer, and not to forward privileged advice to third parties. These points should be explained in the engagement letter and repeated in the portal's own terms of use.
Data protection and retention
Personal data uploaded to a portal falls within the data protection legislation of the relevant jurisdiction, and in cross-border matters possibly within more than one regime. The firm should know where data is held, who may access it, how long it is retained and how it is deleted. It should also be able to respond to requests from clients concerning their data. The retention period for documents in the portal should follow the firm's file retention policy and the rules of the regulator, rather than being determined by the default settings of the software.
Internal workflow: the portal must be the firm's habit too
A portal succeeds when the firm uses it consistently. Clients notice quickly if a fee earner continues to email documents to them while telling them to log in to the portal. The following internal practices support consistent use.
Fee earners and support staff should issue requests, upload documents and answer queries within the portal as a matter of routine, and should resist the habit of sending an email with an attachment for convenience.
A defined response time for portal messages should be adopted and communicated to clients. A client who receives a prompt answer in the portal will use it again; one who waits several days will resort to the telephone.
Notifications should be configured so that clients are alerted by email or text message when something awaits them, without the notification itself containing confidential content.
One person in the firm should be responsible for monitoring portal use, answering clients' technical questions and reporting on problems.
The firm should also think about what happens when a fee earner is absent. If a client's message sits unanswered because the responsible lawyer is on leave, the portal's reliability will be questioned. Matters should therefore be allocated a secondary contact, and the portal should show clients who is responsible for their matter and who to contact in the absence of the principal.
Handling resistance and exceptions
Some clients will not use the portal, however well it is designed. The firm should have a policy for those cases that is proportionate and consistent. A reasonable approach is to accept that some clients will continue to use email for non-sensitive correspondence, while requiring that identity documents, financial information and signed instruments are exchanged through the portal. For clients who cannot or will not use it at all, the firm should record the exception, take what steps are reasonable to protect their material, and avoid creating an informal two-tier system in which some clients' files are poorly documented.
There are also clients for whom a portal is inappropriate: those with limited connectivity, those who need to be assisted by a family member, or those in vulnerable circumstances. The firm should consider reasonable adjustments and should not treat portal non-use as evidence of a client's lack of cooperation.
Measuring whether the portal is working
A firm that wishes to know whether its portal is being used needs to define use in measurable terms. The following indicators are practical, and the firm should record its own baseline rather than relying on external benchmarks, which will rarely be comparable.
Indicator | What it shows | Possible response |
|---|---|---|
Proportion of new clients who accept their invitation within an agreed period | Quality of onboarding | Review the invitation wording and the first-meeting script |
Proportion of documents received through the portal rather than by email | Whether it is the primary channel | Reinforce the engagement letter and remind staff to redirect attachments |
Time between a client request and the firm's response in the portal | Reliability of the firm's side | Adjust allocation and monitoring of messages |
Time to obtain signatures through the portal compared with the previous method | Practical benefit to clients | Extend electronic signing to more document types |
Number of status enquiries by telephone per matter | Whether the portal reduces routine contact | Improve progress statements and task lists |
Client feedback on ease of use | Experience, as perceived by clients | Address recurring complaints, particularly about log-in |
The figures are only useful if recorded consistently. The firm should decide in advance who extracts them, how often they are reviewed and what action follows a deterioration. A short review each quarter, with a note of changes made, is usually enough for a small or mid-sized firm.
Common failures and how to avoid them
Experience across firms suggests a small number of recurring failures. The first is the launch without a plan, in which every client is invited at once and the support burden overwhelms the firm. A phased introduction, beginning with new matters and a small group of willing existing clients, allows problems to be corrected before they affect the whole client base. The second is the overloaded portal, in which clients are asked to read long messages, complete lengthy forms and navigate numerous folders. Simplicity should be preferred. The third is the unattended portal, in which messages are not answered and documents are not filed. This is cured by assigning responsibility and by agreeing service levels. The fourth is the portal that is detached from the matter record, requiring staff to transfer documents manually from the portal to the file. That duplication invites error and discourages use, and it is a strong reason to select a portal that is integrated with the firm's matter and document management rather than a standalone tool.
Practical next steps
List the three client tasks that cause the most friction today, and design the portal around them.
Amend the engagement letter to establish the portal as the agreed channel, to explain confidentiality obligations and to provide for reasonable alternatives.
Draft a short invitation message and a first-login task, and test both with a colleague who has not used the system.
Set visibility rules by matter type so that internal and privileged working papers are never exposed.
Agree a response time for portal messages and name a secondary contact for each matter.
Introduce the portal in phases, starting with new matters, and review the first month's experience before widening it.
Record a baseline for the indicators above and review them each quarter.
Establish a written policy on exceptions for clients who cannot use the portal.
How practice management software supports the client portal
A portal delivers most value when it is part of the same system as matters, documents, billing and e-signature, so that nothing has to be re-keyed or transferred by hand. Legalytech provides a client portal within its practice management platform, and its firm-wide pricing, with unlimited users, allows a firm to give every relevant client contact their own access without incurring additional cost.
This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Practitioners should consult the rules of their own jurisdiction and regulator.
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