Setting Up a Simple Client Portal

• Author: Dennis Kennedy - Tom Mighell
• Pages: 137-142

137

Setting Up a Simple

Client Portal

If it is not obvious to you by now, the Internet and cloud com-

puting are at the heart of nearly every collaboration tool we

discuss in this book. As law firms add offices in multiple loca-

tions and lawyers work from both home and on the road, the

Internet provides the actual platform on which collaboration

is accomplished. Email, websites, audio, video, messaging,

and many more collaboration technologies are facilitated over

the Internet. People know how to use the Internet, and it is a

continuously evolving, highly flexible channel for communica-

tion and collaboration. More importantly for our purposes, it

is an environment in which lawyers and millions of others are

comfortable. And it is increasingly available and being used on

mobile devices.

In this chapter, we will discuss one of the most basic of

Internet collaboration tools: the client portal. Client portals are

the descendants of extranets—private, secure websites. Client

portals can be used for many purposes, but their basic func-

tion is to serve as a 24×7, online resource for clients to com-

municate with their lawyers and get information about their

matters. Once you understand the nature of the client portal,

you will appreciate its ubiquity, versatility, and importance as

part of the lawyer’s collaboration toolbox, especially when you

add in mobile access.

In simplest terms, a client portal is a private, secure web-

site for the purpose of assisting a specific client. While it is

available over the Internet, including by a mobile device, and

accessible through a browser (or potentially a mobile app), a

client portal can be used only by a limited, permission-based

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