Product reference
Client experience: how it works
Follow clear requests, published choices, authority ranges and exact-version signatures. Keep private preparation, personal decisions and document receipt distinct, within the recipient’s permissions and the client-pilot scope.
On this page
Availability
- Supported work
- Give clients clear evidence requests and the context to make their decisions, with personal choices, negotiation authority and signatures on their own records.
- Start with
- Counsel publishes the choice and its context for the actual recipient. The decision workspace brings together formal decisions, negotiation authority, settlement acceptance, signatures and verifications, with separate personal states.
- Key limit
- Confirm which client features are included in your pilot. Legal advice and decisions remain with counsel. The firm controls client access through document review, classification and sharing settings. On a matter with more than one client, each client's answers stay private, but the request's progress is shared.
Some capabilities have their own availability or configuration requirements, shown below.
Before you start
- Counsel publishes the choice and its context for the actual recipient. The decision workspace brings together formal decisions, negotiation authority, settlement acceptance, signatures and verifications, with separate personal states.
- The recipient needs current matter access and the permission for the requested act. Referenced decision sources are rechecked when counsel publishes context. The page’s client-pilot scope still applies.
- A named item, requester and reason explain how the evidence request bears on the matter. A scoped Mac collection is a separate path when the named device sources and consent fit the need.
- A client invited to the portal. The invitation link is personal to them and expires after seven days. Sending it again does not extend it.
- A request that says what is needed, why, and who is asking.
- The portal assistant's disclaimer. The firm can reword it in its settings. Otherwise BRON uses a conservative default that says the assistant is not a lawyer and gives no legal advice.
How it works
Ask for originals, publish the context for a formal decision and keep negotiation authority, settlement acceptance and signatures distinct. The right recipient sees the work counsel published and can return to unfinished preparation. Providing a document or preparing an answer does not record consent.
What does this client need to provide, understand, decide or sign, and what has actually been recorded?
Formal decisions and signatures
Open the client’s own decision workspace
The recipient sees published decisions, authority ranges, settlement acceptance, signatures and verifications with their personal status. Available acts follow that person’s actual permissions. A helper does not acquire decision or signature authority by opening the workspace.
Resume preparation without treating it as consent
The authorized client can save unfinished decision preparation and return to it. Counsel publishes the context and choices, checking the recipient and referenced sources. A prepared answer is private preparation; the client’s actual decision remains a separate recorded act.
Keep authority, acceptance and signature distinct
An authority range sets the client’s negotiation instructions; accepting proposed settlement terms is another act. A signature belongs to the specified document version. None of these states follows merely from uploading a file, sharing a document or drafting an answer.
Give a choice enough context to consider
Counsel can publish why a decision is needed, a recommendation, benefits and risks for the options, and cleared source versions. The client considers that published explanation. Internal strategy does not become visible merely because it informed the recommendation.
See what still needs this person’s signature
The workspace distinguishes a request waiting for this client from signed, declined, expired or withdrawn history. The client opens the document’s signing step to act. A closed request does not imply that this client signed it, and unread sources remain unavailable.
From evidence question to client request
Tell the client why the original matters
For the notice question, ask for the original email, attachment and review-meeting material rather than a new summary of the dispute. Explain who is asking and what counsel wants to examine. A portal request is an attorney’s chosen next step, not an automatic consequence of an element gap.
Keep a missing item actionable
A client can explain that they cannot provide the notes. That answer creates follow-up for counsel, who can ask again, change the item or pursue another source. Review the returned email before adding its facts to the chronology or using it against testimony; received is distinct from reviewed.
What the client sees
Name who is asking and why
A request reaches the client's portal with the attorney asking, what is needed and why. A document request is a checklist, so the client answers one item at a time and each item keeps its own answer.
A status note an attorney published
BRON drafts a plain-language note on where the matter stands and what comes next. It reaches the client only after an attorney publishes it, and it never carries probabilities or strategy.
How the client can answer
Three ways to answer an item
For each item, the client can send it, say they cannot provide it, or ask what it means. A file that arrives is not treated as reviewed, and a question is not treated as a refusal.
When the client cannot provide it
Saying they cannot provide an item marks it blocked and posts their reason to the matter's thread. The attorney who owns the request gets a high-priority task to find another source. Nothing counts as received, and the request is still outstanding.
A question means the firm owes a reply
Asking what an item means leaves it outstanding and still the client's to answer. The item shows that the firm owes a reply, and the request cannot read as finished until the firm gives one.
Choose from the attorney's written options
For a decision, the attorney writes between two and twelve options and the client picks one. Each option is saved as a short code and its wording, and nothing else is carried with it to the client.
What the firm can check
Received, under review, reviewed
An upload shows as received when the firm holds the file, under review once a review task has gone to a named attorney, and reviewed once an attorney has moved the request on. A state BRON cannot read shows as unknown.
Follow a recorded choice back to the legal team
A decision’s receipt distinguishes recorded, sent to the legal team and opened by the legal team. Opened does not claim attorney review. If delivery cannot be checked, the choice remains recorded and the client is told they do not need to submit it again.
An assistant that says it is not a lawyer
The portal assistant gives general information about the matter and says it is not a lawyer. It passes a question to the attorney only when it flags a request for advice, or when the client asks for their attorney. The firm can reword its disclaimer.
What never reaches the client
Classification and sharing are separate requirements
AvailableA document reaches the portal only when its privilege classification clears it and the firm has shared it with the client. Privileged and work-product documents never do, nor does one held as possibly privileged. A document never classified is kept out.
A court's order, checked on its own
An attorneys' eyes only designation under a protective order is checked apart from the firm's privilege review. A document can clear privilege review and still be kept from the client by the order.
What it reads from
- Requests the firm sends the client
- Documents cleared and shared with the client
- Status notes an attorney published
- Decisions an attorney poses
Who can do what
- An authorized client can save unfinished decision preparation and resume it. A draft answer does not record consent or substitute for the final decision.
- Counsel can publish why now, a recommendation, option benefits and risks, and exact cleared document versions. This explanation is client-facing only through the publication step.
- A recorded choice has separate delivery states: recorded, sent to the legal team and opened. None of those states claims attorney review.
- Signature progress belongs to this recipient and the specified document. Closed history does not establish a signature by a person who did not answer.
- Where billing access permits, issued invoices and retainer funding requests have their own payment steps. A choice, settlement acceptance or document signature does not record a payment.
- A helper cannot decide or sign. Authority to negotiate, acceptance of particular terms and a document signature remain separate personal acts; sharing a document grants none of them.
- Counsel reviews returned originals and decides whether another custodian or discovery request could answer the question. A client’s explanation stays attached to its item.
- A document reaches the portal only when its privilege classification clears it and the firm has shared it with the client.
- Privileged and work-product documents never reach the portal, and neither does a document held as possibly privileged.
- An attorneys' eyes only designation under a protective order is checked separately, and it can keep a cleared document from the client.
- Sharing with a client needs a licensed attorney.
- An attorney poses a decision with two to twelve options they wrote. Each option is stored with its own identifier and its label.
- The task for an item a client cannot provide goes to the attorney who owns the request, or to the matter's owner if no attorney is set.
- On a matter with more than one client, answers stay private but the request's progress is shared.
What it produces
- The matter's documents, waiting for review
- The attorney who owns the request
- The matter's thread
- The activity log
Limits
- Clients see only documents an attorney has reviewed and shared. Privileged and work-product material never reaches the client portal.
- On a matter with more than one client, answers stay private but the request's progress is shared.
- Nobody reviews the portal assistant's reply before the client reads it. For advice or decisions, it tells the client to ask their attorney directly.
What BRON will not do
Show a client a document nobody has classified.
A document reaches the portal only when it carries one of the two classifications that clear it. A blank or unrecognized classification fails, so what a client may see is built up from what is allowed, never cut down from everything.
Tell a client their upload was reviewed because it arrived.
Reviewed is a claim about an attorney's attention. Each state reads a record that already exists, and a state BRON cannot read shows as unknown, never as reviewed.
Fold a court's order into the privilege review.
Privilege is the firm's verdict and a protective order is the court's restriction. Recorded in one place, one would have to overwrite the other, so BRON checks them separately.
Treat a client's question as a refusal.
A client who asks what an item means has not said they cannot provide it. The item stays outstanding, and the firm owes an answer, not a search for another source.
Put a probability in the client's status note.
The note says where the matter stands and what comes next. BRON drafts it, but it never carries probabilities or strategy, and only an attorney can publish it.
When something goes wrong
- A source that cannot be read remains unavailable; an unread workspace does not establish that no decisions are pending. Missing or unprovisioned decision sources retain their status.
- If decision delivery cannot be read, BRON keeps the choice recorded and says delivery could not be checked; the client is not asked to submit it again. An unread billing summary does not become a zero balance.
- The firm’s private strategy and work product do not become client-visible because they informed a recommendation. A client decision or signature does not authorize funds movement.
- Cannot provide does not establish that the item was destroyed or never existed. A received upload does not establish the factual proposition it may bear on.
- If a client cannot provide an item, the item is marked blocked, their reason goes on the matter's thread and the attorney gets a high-priority task. Nothing counts as received, and the request is still outstanding.
- The item is marked first. Posting the reason and creating the task come after it, and if either fails, BRON logs the failure and the mark stands.
- A question about an item leaves it outstanding. The item shows that the firm owes a reply.
- An upload that matches no request shows as received, with no review step to show. An upload BRON cannot check shows as unknown.
- A document whose classification is blank or not one BRON recognizes is kept out of the portal.
- Nobody reviews the assistant's reply before the client reads it.