Where intake falls apart
A potential client calls about an estate plan, leaves a voicemail, then fills out the form on your site. Two days later the paralegal finds both, but by then the person has hired someone who called back first. A business client says they never got the engagement letter. A matter sits in "we should follow up" for three weeks because nobody owned it.
Practice management software is built for time, billing and documents on active matters. The work before a matter is opened, and the follow-up after it closes, often lives in email and memory. Everything Portal gives that work a home.
How the portal is set up for a firm
Choose the Legal setup from the industry setups and you start with:
- Clients and matters. People are clients, and the work is matters. Rename them if your firm uses different words.
- A matters pipeline with five stages: Intake, Consult, Retained, Active and Closed. Each matter is a card with a value you can drag from stage to stage.
- Fields for legal work: Matter type, Conflict check and Statute of limitations, plus your own fields.
- Conflict checks as a recorded step. The portal doesn't run conflict checks for you. It gives you a Conflict check field (for example Clear or Not run) and a place to see at a glance which intakes haven't been checked yet.
- Consult booking pages so prospective clients choose a time themselves, on your own web address if you like.
- A shared inbox with email threaded by conversation and filed to the client. Connect Microsoft 365, Outlook, Gmail or Google Workspace.
Engagement letters signed online
Write your engagement letter once as a template with merge fields for the client's name, matter type and fee, or attach a PDF your firm already uses. Each signer gets a private link, agrees to sign electronically, then types or draws a signature on a phone or computer.
You see when the letter is opened, viewed and signed. Everyone receives the signed copy with a signing certificate showing who signed, when, from what IP address, city and device, plus a SHA-256 fingerprint that shows the document wasn't changed.
In the US, the ESIGN Act (2000) and UETA give electronic signatures legal effect for most business documents, with exceptions such as wills and certain family-law and court documents. For anything high-stakes, check with your own counsel on the right signing method. The e-signature guide covers what makes a signature hold up.
A day for a solo attorney
At 9:00 a website form arrives. It becomes a new client with lead source Website and the message attached, and an automation assigns it to the intake coordinator and creates a task: run the conflict check today. She gets a team chat alert as soon as it's assigned.
The conflict check comes back clear, so she updates the field and moves the matter to Consult. The prospect books a consult on the booking page. After the meeting, the attorney sends the engagement letter from a template. When it's signed, she moves the matter to Retained and sends the first invoice by email, with a line item for the retainer.
That afternoon, the attorney asks Spera, the AI assistant, "what's on my plate today?" and gets her tasks and open conversations from the firm's own records. An automation creates a task for any client with no activity for five days, so nothing quietly stalls. The law firm intake guide goes deeper on that flow.
What's connected
Email connects directly to your Microsoft or Google mailbox, and you can send from your own domain. Website forms post straight into contacts. Webhooks and an API connect your own systems with no middleware in between.
Invoices show when the email is opened and when the invoice is viewed, on what device, with partial payments and reminders. Online card payments are coming; for now clients see your payment instructions. QuickBooks Online isn't built in yet: we can build a custom connection, and a built-in version is planned. Two-way sync with HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM and Pipedrive is coming. See the integrations section.
Getting started
Export your client list and open matters to a spreadsheet, import it, and map columns to Matter type and Conflict check. Set up your engagement letter template next, then add one automation for new inquiries before building more.
