A law firm client portal with no password to forget

Most of the calls a small firm takes from existing clients are a version of the same few questions. Did you get my documents? Where are we? What do I owe? A portal can answer those without a phone call, but only if clients use it, and clients give up on a portal the first time they cannot remember the password.

What the rules ask about client communication

ABA Model Rule 1.4 asks a lawyer to keep the client reasonably informed about the status of the matter and to promptly comply with reasonable requests for information. Rule 1.6(c) asks for reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access to information about the representation. A portal sits between the two. It should make status and documents easy for the client to reach, and hard for anyone else to reach. Your state’s versions of these rules govern the details.

What Coil does

• Magic-link login. The client enters their email and gets a link that works once and expires after thirty minutes. Nobody has a password to reuse or lose.
• Each client sees only their own file. A client sees their own matters, documents, invoices and messages and nothing else. Changing a number in the address bar does not reach anyone else’s matter.
• Shared documents and uploads. You choose which documents to share. The client can upload into their matter, and the upload lands with the matter’s other documents, versioned and searchable like any other file.
• Messages both ways. Portal messages are filed to the matter, next to any texts sent through your Twilio account, so the whole conversation is in one place.
• Letters to sign. Engagement letters and other documents sent for e-signature can be signed from the portal, with the signing certificate kept on the matter.
• Spanish. Client-facing pages and emails switch to Spanish for a contact who prefers it.
• Invoices. Clients can see their invoices. Paying online depends on Coil’s invoicing and payments, which are built and in testing, not available today.

What a client actually sees

A client who opens the link lands on their own matters. Each matter shows the documents you shared with them and any they uploaded, the message thread with your office, and anything waiting for their signature. A client with two matters sees both and no one else’s. When you share a document or reply to a message, it is there the next time they sign in, with nothing to download or install. A link that is forwarded, or found later in an old email, opens nothing, because it has already been used or has expired.

What Coil does not do

There is no portal app in the app stores; clients open the portal in a browser. Coil does not show clients a stage-by-stage timeline that updates itself as the matter moves. The keyboard and screen-reader pass across the portal is in the next phase, so if one of your clients relies on a screen reader, ask where it stands before you move them over. Arabic and Hebrew text renders in Coil’s PDFs, but without proper shaping, which is a later fix.

Why it matters for a small firm

Every question a client can answer from the portal is a call your office does not have to return, and every document a client uploads to the matter is one attachment fewer to save by hand. Because the portal reads from the same record your office works in, what the client sees is what you see, and there is no second system to keep up to date.

Coil is free during the beta, and beta firms keep founding pricing when paid plans start.

Last checked October 28, 2026.