The client portal

If your attorney's firm runs on Per Stirpes, you have a client portal on the firm's own web address. It shows your engagement the way the firm sees it: where things stand, the documents shared with you, anything waiting on you, and your invoices.

Signing in

There is no password. The firm sends sign-in links by email; click the link, and you're in. Links are single-use and expire after a while for your protection, so you request a fresh one whenever you need to get back in.

Now and then a link lands on a page showing your firm's name and a single Continue button. Click it and you carry on as normal. It's there because mail systems sometimes open a link on their way to delivering it, and that page keeps your link waiting for you rather than being spent before you arrive.

You don't have to wait for the firm to send one. The firm's portal has an access page where you enter the email the firm has on file for your engagement and a new sign-in link is sent to that address. If a link you already have has lapsed, the expired-link page offers the same one-click request. It works for anyone the firm has shared a document with, not only its clients, so a trustee sent a copy of the trust can get back in the same way.

Asking twice in a row doesn't get you in faster, and the page will ask you to wait a moment before it sends another. Each new link replaces the one before it, so if a message is already on its way, the quickest route back in is the most recent one in your inbox.

If you're already signed in when you open an older link, the page says so rather than telling you the link expired, and offers to take you straight through. If the person signed in isn't you, which happens on a shared computer, Sign out at the top of the page and ask for a link of your own.

A lapsed link keeps its errand. If the one that expired was taking you somewhere in particular, a questionnaire, a booking page, a document the firm shared, the replacement takes you to that same place rather than dropping you at the portal home to find it yourself.

When you're done, you can sign out from the portal header, a good habit on a shared computer.

What you'll find

The portal opens on an Overview that puts your matter front and center, shows how far along it is, and points you at the next thing that needs you, so you're never guessing what to do. From there, tabs across the top:

• Documents are the drafts and executed documents the firm has shared with you, ready to download, and any file the firm has shared from its own records sits in the same list. When the firm chooses to notify you about shared documents, you get one email listing everything new, with a link straight to them, rather than a separate message per document. Most arrive as PDFs; if the firm shares an editable Word file instead, that's a deliberate choice on their part, usually because they want your changes. A draft can disappear from the list for a while: that means the firm is revising it, and it comes back when they've reviewed the new version and shared it again. When your plan is complete, the firm may share it as one entry, Complete estate plan: a single PDF holding every document in your plan in order, and View your plan to open the whole thing, with the individual documents listed beneath it. Something shared with you from a matter you're not a client of, a trust you're the trustee of, say, appears under Shared with you.
• Intake is anything the firm needs you to fill in, usually your questionnaire, until it's done.
• Files is where you send the firm files they've asked for (a deed, a beneficiary statement), kept together by matter. The firm is notified when you upload.
• Invoices show what's been billed and what's been paid, opening with the amount due across everything. Each one opens to its lines, its payments, and a copy of the invoice to download. Payment by card or bank transfer is built in; see payments and signing for how it works.

Your firm contacts appear on the overview too, so you always know who you're working with.

Couples

On a joint engagement, both spouses have their own sign-in and see the shared matter. You each have your own questionnaire, and either of you can fill in the other's; see the questionnaire for how that works.