Inviting Contacts to the Client Portal
The client portal is a great way to keep your leads and clients engaged with your firm as you are working on their intake or the case itself. When you invite a contact to the portal they will be prompted to accept the invitation and create a password. They will then be able to sign into their own dashboard to view their matter whenever they would like.
When a contact is invited to the portal they will receive an email like the one shown below. The word "Lawmatics" in both the subject and email body will be replaced with the name of you firm.
Access to the client portal is given on a contact by contact basis. This means that if you have several relationships attached to a matter, such as a spouse, a third party payor, etc, you will have the option to give each one of them their own independent access to their own portal.
Portal access is also granted on a matter by matter basis, so if you have a contact with multiple different matters, they would have a separate portal for each of their matters. You can also choose to give portal access for one of their matters, but not the other(s).
Granting portal access can be done manually from the matter's profile or via automation. To manually invite the contact(s) on a matter to the portal, click the portal button on the matter profile, highlighted in red below.
Notice that this matter has a related contact, shown on the left sidebar in the Matter Relationships section.
Once you click the portal button, highlighted in red above, you will then select which of the contacts on this matter you would like to give portal access to.
Check the box for whichever contact(s) you would like to invite, and then click save. This will email them the invitation to access their portal.
You can also invite someone to access the portal via automation. When building an automation, you will see an action item for Invite to Client Portal. When you select this action item, you will then select which of your various relationships should be included in the invitation. You can select any or all that apply, shown below. The "automation target" sends the invite to the primary contact on the matter.
Once someone has portal access, signature documents, file requests, and appointments scheduled for the matter will automatically be shared via a contact's portal, as long as that contact has been granted access and they are a party to the item being shared. You can also opt to share tasks, forms, and messages via portal.
If you need to ever revoke portal access, simply uncheck the Has Access? box, shown in the Portal Options window image above, and click Save. That contact will no longer be able to sign in to their portal.
You can easily tell if a matter has been granted portal access by looking for the purple portal icon to the right of their name, shown in the image below.
On the client's end, when they sign into their portal they will see the page shown below.
FAQ's
Will I be signing into the client's portal as a firm user?
No, everything for the client portal will be managed on your end directly from your regular Lawmatics account. The client portal will only be accessed on your client's end.
When I invite someone to the portal can they see all of my notes on their matter?
No, they will only be able to see things that you have chosen to share with them. This could include tasks, appointments, e-signature documents, file requests, intake forms, and messages. It will never include your notes or any of your CRM data fields.
Can any of my firm users grant and/or revoke portal access to a contact?
You can limit this privilege in your Manage Users page found in settings. Click the Manage Roles button in the top right to customize your different permission levels for you various firm users. You can choose to give users the ability to Grant Portal Access or not.