Imagine a client of your law firm trying to find a tax litigation specialist, but the lawyer directory on the site hasn't been updated in six months. The client portal doesn't show case status, and documents are sent via email — deadlines and confidentiality are lost. The result: client churn and litigation risks. A legal portal solves these issues, but its development requires deep understanding of LegalTech: from Row-Level Security to escrow calculations. With extensive experience across 50+ projects for law firms and LegalTech startups, we know how to build a convenient, secure, and scalable system.
Types of Legal Portals
- Corporate site for a single firm: team, practices, blog with legal analysis, consultation request form, client portal.
- Lawyer aggregator (similar to YouDo): lawyer catalog, selection by specialization, request, payment, consultation.
- LegalTech SaaS: contract constructor, document workflow automation, electronic signing.
| Type | Key Features | Typical Audience |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate portal | Client portal, document workflow, blog | Single law firm |
| Lawyer aggregator | Catalog, rating, escrow payments | Mass market |
| LegalTech SaaS | Document constructor, API | Lawyers and companies |
Key Modules of the Platform
Lawyer profile includes specializations (criminal, family, tax law), experience, rating, consultation price, and calendar integration. Search with filtering by price, experience, and rating. In one project, we achieved search time under 300 ms using Elasticsearch.
Client portal displays case status, current stage, documents, correspondence, upcoming events (hearings, deadlines), invoices and payments. Confidentiality is enforced via Row-Level Security. This module increases client retention by 30%.
Online legal consultation in three formats: text (chat with history), video (WebRTC), written response within 24–48 hours. All data is protected by attorney-client privilege.
Contract constructor works with templates containing variables ({{Party_1_Name}}, {{date}}), a step-by-step wizard, PDF/DOCX generation via docxtemplater, and sending for signature via built-in electronic signature or DocuSign integration.
For aggregators, we implement an escrow scheme: the client pays when booking, the lawyer receives funds after consultation. Platform commission: 15–25%. Payment gateways: Stripe, YooKassa.
Why Row-Level Security Is Critical for LegalTech?
Confidentiality is the top requirement. We apply AES-256 encryption for document storage, Row-Level Security in PostgreSQL for row-level access control, and multi-factor authentication. All actions are audited in a centralized log, connections are only over HTTPS. Clients see only their documents, lawyers see only assigned cases, practice leaders see all cases within their practice. To comply with attorney-client privilege, access to consultation materials is strictly limited: no third party can access them.
RLS implementation in PostgreSQL: the policy policy client_access ON cases FOR SELECT USING (client_id = current_setting('app.current_user_id')::int) ensures the client sees only their cases, even in case of application errors. Similarly for lawyers and administrators.
Technical implementation of Row-Level Security
We use PostgreSQL policies to ensure data isolation. Example: `CREATE POLICY user_isolation ON documents FOR SELECT USING (owner_id = current_setting('app.user_id')::int);`How We Design the Architecture?
Our approach is microservice architecture. It allows scaling the system 2x faster than a monolith. For a legal portal, we ensure data security and scalability by combining microservices with RLS and encryption. Design stages:
- Requirements analysis: load (RPM, number of cases), roles (client, lawyer, admin, supervisor), usage scenarios.
- Database design with Row-Level Security and partitioning for 10,000+ cases.
- Technology stack: React + Next.js for frontend, Laravel or Node.js for backend, PostgreSQL, Redis for cache, Elasticsearch for search.
- MVP development: lawyer profiles, request form, client portal, documents.
- Testing: load testing (k6) with a profile of 1000 concurrent users, pentest for data protection.
- Deployment: Docker, Nginx, Grafana + Prometheus.
We guarantee the architecture handles peak loads. For example, one of our projects processes 10,000 requests per day with TTFB under 200 ms. For a large law firm network, we deployed a portal that handles 5,000 active cases with 99.9% uptime.
What’s Included in the Work?
Delivery includes:
- Full API documentation (Swagger/OpenAPI).
- Access to repository and CI/CD pipeline.
- Training for the client’s team (up to 5 hours).
- One month of technical support after launch.
- Data migration and integration setup.
Что входит в работу
Включает:
- Полную документацию API (Swagger/OpenAPI).
- Доступ к репозиторию и CI/CD.
- Обучение команды клиента (до 5 часов).
- Один месяц технической поддержки после запуска.
- Миграцию данных и настройку интеграций.
Development Process and Timeline
| Stage | Duration |
|---|---|
| MVP (profiles, request, client portal, documents) | 2–3 months |
| Full aggregator (consultations, constructor, e-sign, finance) | 4–6 months |
Operational cost savings can reach 40% compared to paper document workflow. Average consultation price on an aggregator is $30–50, making the service accessible. The typical cost for an MVP ranges from $15,000 to $25,000, depending on complexity.
Contact us for a preliminary assessment of your project. Request an engineer consultation — we can propose an architecture within 2 days.