Using the Client Portal

The Client Portal is the door you open for a client into their own case, and nothing else. Instead of trading documents over email, chasing signatures on an intake form, or fielding “what do I still owe?” phone calls, you grant one client one secure login and let them do those things themselves. What they see is their view of their matter, kept current automatically, never your internal workspace.

The reason to use it is the work it takes off your desk. A client who can upload their own documents, answer their own intake questions, and pay their own invoice is a client you are not emailing back and forth with all week. And because everything they enter flows straight into your records the moment they save it, you are never re-keying what they typed.

What the Client Portal Is

A portal account is tied to a single contact in your firm, and it shows that person only the leads and cases they are actually part of. When a client signs in, they land on a page built from a few sections: their personal information, a section for each lead they have with you, and a section for each case in which they are a named client. There is no firm dashboard, no list of other clients, no access to your settings or reports. It is a private, read-and-respond view of their own work.

Sign-in is handled by a dedicated authentication service (Auth0), the same secure login your own staff use. Your firm never sees or stores the client’s password.

Granting a Client Access

You grant access from the Contacts page, one contact at a time. A contact becomes eligible for the portal once two things are true:

• They are connected to a lead or a case. The portal only has something to show a client who is actually part of a matter, so a contact with no lead and no case cannot be granted access.
• They have a valid primary email. The email must be marked as the contact’s primary email and as one you can contact. This is the address the portal invitation and the login both run through, so it has to be one the client controls.

To grant access, open the contact and choose to create portal access. Outlaw asks you to confirm, then provisions the account. When it finishes, you will see a Portal Access Granted confirmation, and the client receives their invitation by email.

What the Client Receives and How They Sign In

Provisioning sends the client what they need to get in. They will receive an email inviting them to the portal with a link to the sign-in page. From there, signing in goes through Auth0 Universal Login, the secure hosted login screen, where the client sets or enters their password, completes any verification, and is taken into their portal.

A few things are worth telling clients up front:

• You do not hold their password. Login is managed by the authentication service, not stored in Outlaw, so if they ever forget it, the right move is the reset password option on the login screen, not a call to your office. Anyone can reset their own password from that screen.
• The login is just for the portal. It signs them in as a portal client, with the limited view described above, not as a staff user of your firm’s Outlaw account.

If a client tells you a link did not arrive, the usual cause is the email on their contact: confirm it is correct, primary, and marked contactable, then grant access again.

What the Client Can Do

Once signed in, the client works inside the sections for their own matters.

Their personal information. The client can review and update their own details, contact methods (address, email, phone), and identification. Keeping this current is genuinely useful to you: a client correcting their own phone number or address means your records update without you touching them.

Complete intake forms. Wherever your firm has attached intake questions to a lead or case, the client sees those questions in that matter’s intake section and answers them directly. This is the part of intake clients are meant to fill out themselves (see Intake & Custom Fields). Answers save as they go.

Upload documents. Each lead and case has a documents section where the client can see the files shared with them and add their own by dragging files in. This is how a client sends you a signed form, an ID, or a piece of evidence without an email attachment.

View and pay invoices. On a case, the client sees a plain-language summary of what they owe. When there is a balance due, a Pay Now action lets them pay the invoice online through Outlaw Payments, prefilled with the current amount due. If the case carries a minimum trust balance and the trust has run low, a Fund Now action lets the client top it up the same way. Their payment records against the case immediately.

See their case financial history. The case section includes the client’s own financial history, the transactions and trust activity on their matter, so they can see what has been billed, what they have paid, and where their trust balance stands, without asking you to pull it.

How Portal Activity Syncs Back to Your Firm

Everything the client does in the portal flows into your records right away, and it works both directions. A document the client uploads appears on the lead or case in your Outlaw workspace as soon as they add it. An intake answer they enter is on the record the moment they save it. A payment they make posts to the case immediately. Just as importantly, the reverse holds: a document you add on your side shows up in the client’s portal right away. There is no sync step to run and no nightly batch to wait for, so the portal and your records are never out of step.

What Clients Can and Cannot See

The portal is deliberately a narrow window. A client sees only the matters they belong to, and within those matters, only what is meant for them. Your internal work stays internal:

• Private Comments are never shown in the portal. The private comments your team keeps on a record are for your firm, and a portal client never sees them.
• Private intake questions are hidden. Any intake question your firm marks private is left out of the client’s view; they only see the questions you intend them to answer.
• There is no access to your firm at large. No other clients, no firm-wide financials, no settings, no reports. A portal login reaches exactly one person’s matters and nothing beyond them.

Think of the portal as the client’s file as you would hand it to them, not your desk. If something should never reach the client, keeping it in Private Comments (or marking the question private) keeps it on your side of the line.

Revoking Access

Removing access is as direct as granting it, and just as safe for your records. Open the contact, choose to revoke portal access, and confirm. Outlaw removes the client’s login credentials from the authentication service so they can no longer sign in, and you will see a Portal Access Removed confirmation.

Revoking access does not delete any data. Every document the client uploaded, every intake answer they gave, and every payment they made stays exactly where it is on the lead or case. You are closing the door, not emptying the room. If you ever need to let the client back in, grant access again and a fresh invitation goes out.