Client Portal Redesign

This page describes a representative client portal redesign. The client is not named. We do not claim a support-ticket reduction. The work was a portal used by staff and by their clients to share documents and case updates, redesigned around the journeys people already had, badly, in email.

The situation

The old portal existed. Clients could log in. Many of them did not. They emailed the matter owner, who downloaded a file, renamed it, and uploaded it later if they remembered. Status lived in the lawyer's or the case worker's head. A client asking "where is my matter" got a paragraph reply that the portal was supposed to have made unnecessary.

The screens were not ugly in a way a new colour would fix. They were arranged around the database: matters, documents, users, settings. A client does not arrive wanting the document module. They arrive wanting the letter they were promised, or a way to send the scan they were asked for. Staff arrived wanting the matters that moved today, not a search box and an empty grid.

What we took on

This was UI and UX work on a system that stayed. We did not rewrite the case database. We watched a client try to send one file, and we watched a staff member try to see what changed since yesterday. We wrote those two journeys down and threw away navigation that did not serve them.

The client home is now the open matter, the last update in one sentence, and the single action that is actually waiting: send a document, read a letter, or confirm a date. A matter with nothing waiting does not invent a task to look busy. Documents show who added them and when. A file name the client understands beats an internal reference on its own.

The staff home is the list of matters with a change, not every matter the firm has ever opened. Filters match the words they use in the office. We removed a dashboard of counts nobody could act on. A number with no next step is decoration.

Empty states got a sentence too. A new client with no document yet sees what to send, not a blank table that looks broken. A matter with no update yet says when the last action was, so silence is visible instead of looking like a fault in the page.

What shipped

The same login, a different first screen, and a document exchange that does not require a tutorial. Updates are short and dated. Email still exists, and the portal can send the client a link back to the matter, so the message in the inbox and the page on the site are the same fact. We tested the flows with staff before clients saw them. A portal the internal team will not open will not be adopted by the people they serve.

What we refused

We did not add a chat window. The firm already had a way to talk; the failure was the record of what was sent. We did not redesign the public marketing site in the same project. We did not call the work finished because a design file looked cleaner. Finished meant a client could complete the one action the matter was waiting on, without a phone call.

What a similar project needs from you

Access to the current portal, two clients who will try a task while someone watches, and one staff member who does the upload every day. A list of documents that must never be visible to the wrong party. If your portal is really a new product, say so. If it is a confusing front on a system you will keep, start at UI/UX and digital design.