Client portal
The firm's sideThe half of the file
your client touches.
A client portal for firms of one to ten attorneys. Clients send you documents and sign them in the browser, and everything lands on the matter it belongs to — with no attachments, no chasing, and no shared drive link still working two years after the engagement closed.
From $29 a month, per firmCompare plans
01What they open
Six things your client
gets, and nothing else.
The portal is not a second product bolted to the side. It is the same system with the staff half taken away, which is why there is nothing in it for them to get lost in.
An invitation, not a sign-up
The firm invites them by email. They set a password and they are in. There is nothing to download, no licence to buy and no seat on your bill — a client costs nothing to add.
How it worksA shorter version of the same product
Six entries in the menu where an attorney has nine: no Folders, no Templates, no Users. The screen is not a cut-down mobile view — the role is simply smaller, and it looks it.
How it worksOnly the matters they are the client on
Their document list says so at the top: showing documents assigned to you. One client cannot see another, and nobody has to remember to set that per file.
How it worksThey upload, and it lands on the matter
No attachment, no reply-all, and no question about which folder it belongs in. The file arrives filed, because the matter is what they uploaded it against.
How it worksSigned where they are standing
Drawn, typed or uploaded, in the browser, on whatever they are holding. No separate signing service for them to create an account with, and no seat for you to buy.
How it worksMessages that stay on the matter
A thread belongs to the matter rather than to an inbox, so the question they asked in March is still underneath it in September, where the next person to pick the file up will find it.
How it works
02The three demos avoid
We published the questions.
Here are our answers.
Our own checklist for buying a portal names three questions most demos steer around. It would be a poor article if we did not answer them about ourselves, in public, before you ask.
- What is the total cost at our actual size?
Flat, per firm. The plans are separated by how many clients you carry, not by how many people at the firm log in, so the seasonal contractor, the bookkeeper and the partner who signs in twice a year cost nothing. Starter carries 25 clients at $29 a month.
See the plans- What does month two look like?
Documents are filed on a matter rather than into a folder tree, so the list a client opens is theirs and the list you open is filtered by the matter you are working on, with search across both. We have not published a figure for how it behaves at four thousand documents, because we have not measured one.
How filing works- What happens to our data if we leave?
Documents download in the format they went in as, and the export is in the product rather than something you have to ask us for. There is no notice period on it and no fee for it.
Export and download
03What it will not do
Four things to know
before you send the invitations.
Every one of these is a question a careful firm asks, and every one is cheaper to answer now than in month three.
The activity log is not evidence
You can see who opened a document and every time it was downloaded, client included. What you cannot do is treat it as attested: nothing signs those rows, nothing alerts you, and no audit has examined them. Useful to you; not something to hand a regulator.
No app for your client to install
It is a browser, on a phone or anything else. That is deliberate — asking a client to install something is the step most of them do not take — but if an app in the stores is what you are shopping for, this is not it.
Nothing is filed for them
A client who ignores the invitation is a client still emailing you attachments. The portal removes the excuse and the chasing; it does not remove the person.
No court filing, no payments
They can send you documents and sign them. They cannot pay an invoice here, and nothing files anything with a court.
What we hold, how it is encrypted and the certifications we do not have are written out on the security page, in the same register as this.
04Questions firms ask
Before the first
invitation goes out.
- Does my client have to create an account?
- They complete an invitation you send, which sets their password. They do not sign up to anything themselves, they are never asked for a card, and they cannot be billed.
- How many clients can we invite?
- Twenty-five on Starter, a hundred on Professional, and no limit on Enterprise. That is the only axis the plans differ on — staff at the firm are unlimited on all three.
- What can a client see?
- The matters they are the client on, the documents filed there, and the threads they are part of. They cannot see other clients, other matters, or who else at the firm is staffed on theirs.
- Can they upload, or only download?
- Both. Upload is the half that saves the week — it is why the file arrives filed on the matter instead of as an attachment you have to put somewhere.
- Is a client portal worth it over a shared drive?
- Sometimes not, and we wrote the honest comparison rather than the sales version of it. A drive is cheaper and already paid for; there are four things it cannot do, and whether they matter depends on your practice.
Put it in front of
one client first.
The trial runs for 30 days and takes a card at the end of it, not the start. One matter and one client is enough to know whether Pertavo belongs in your week.