Andres Martinez
Founder & CEO, Kacti
The portal was supposed to end this
Most law firms have heard the pitch for a client portal. One secure place where clients upload documents, read messages and check on their matter, instead of sending everything over email. The pitch is right about the problem: case communication over email leaves files scattered across inboxes and download folders, and months in, neither the firm nor the client can say what was shared.
The pitch is wrong about where the problem gets solved. At firms with fewer than 50 attorneys, fewer than one in four offer a secure client portal at all (ABA 2022 Legal Technology Survey). Firms that do offer one often tell the same story: the client uses it once, maybe twice, then replies to the next email instead. Within a week the paralegal is checking two places.
Why the portal looked like the answer
On paper, a portal fixes the firm's side of the problem. Documents arrive in one place. Messages are logged. There is a login, so the firm can tell clients it is secure.
It works from the firm's point of view because the firm chose it. The firm set it up, trained the staff, and has forty matters' worth of reasons to build the habit. Every exchange has two sides, though, and only one of them chose the portal.
The portal asks the most of the person with the least reason to use it
The client did not buy a portal. They hired a lawyer. They have one case, often the first of their life, and the firm has forty. Every step the portal asks of them is something new to learn, for the person with the least reason to learn it.
The steps add up. Create an account. Pick a password. Install an app, or find the browser tab again. Come back later and discover the link has expired, so ask for a new one. Each step is small on its own; together they are a wall between the client and the one thing they came to do, which is send the lease.
Then the notification arrives, and it is an email. "You have a new message, log in to see it." From the client's chair the portal is email with extra steps, and the extra steps are all theirs.
From the client's chair the portal is email with extra steps, and the extra steps are all theirs.
The firm's side has its own version of the problem, and the paralegal is the one who lives it. What the client sends through the portal lands in the portal, not in the case folder the firm works from. So the paralegal downloads each file and files it again by hand. Receiving and filing were two separate chores, and the portal never joined them.
When using portals, receiving and filing were two separate chores, and the portal never joined them.
What the fallback costs
When a client stumbles on any of those steps, the staff do the sensible thing. They send the email, that same day, because the matter cannot wait for the client to reset a password. Once the email exchange works, nothing pulls the client back to the portal.
So the firm ends up watching two places: the portal to check, and the inbox to work from. A portal that half the clients use is more work than no portal, because the paralegal now has to ask which one a file came through.
A portal that half the clients use is more work than no portal.
And the risks the portal was bought to remove come back with the inbox. An email to the wrong person is possible again. The file the client sent in March is in someone's downloads folder. The question in September, "did that come through the portal or by email?", has no quick answer.
What works instead: how Kacti does it
This is why we built Kacti, as a messaging app for law firms and their clients. It starts where the portal failed: with the client.
Whether a client will use something is decided in their first five minutes. Here is what Kacti does in those five minutes, and after.
In Kacti, the first send is the sign-up. The client gets one email from your firm, in the attorney's name. They tap the link, the app opens, and your message is the first thing they see: please send the lease and photos of the notice. They add the photos and send. No account, no password, no website login. If there is nothing to learn, there is nothing to abandon.
What the client sends reaches you, not a link to go and fetch it. When the client sends, your firm gets a notification from Kacti that names the case and the sender, and the message is one tap away. Not an email that says log in to see it. It works the same way for the client: they hear from the app, not from a link that expires.
Files land in your case folder, where you already work. Everything sent in Kacti ends up in the case folder, on the drive your firm already uses: Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, or a plain folder on your computer. The client keeps their own copy the same way. No download, no re-filing, and the September question has an answer: it is in the case, in order.
That is the difference, and the client is the one who notices it first. With your clients, the conversation moves into Kacti. Email stays for everyone else: opposing counsel, the court, vendors.
Built for the side that has to show up
Portals didn't fail because clients don't care about security or organization. They failed because they were built for the side that already had the habit, and asked the other side to pay for it in logins.
If you'd like to see how a case runs from the first invite to the day it closes, talk to us.
