Neon Law | Matter files: portal for clients, workbench for lawyers

Matter files: portal for clients, workbench for lawyers

Every Project also has a matter file surface. Clients see it as Documents, Engagements, Invoices, and other plain-English portal views. If a person is added to a Project, Navigator can show them the client-facing files for that matter; if they are not added, those files do not exist from their portal's point of view.

Lawyer users have the firm workbench. Assigned lawyers work the Project through /lawyer. Admins are lawyer-tier users with installation-wide authority, so they can reach the same firm workbench without per-Project assignment. Clients never need that layer and never see the private GCS bucket behind the files.

Presenter notes

This slide is where you separate "client can see their matter file" from "lawyer can work the matter." In Navigator, client access is portal-native: Documents, Engagements, Invoices, comments, signatures, and review surfaces filtered by the Project participant list. Lawyer access adds the firm workbench, plus an on-disk mirror for attorneys and paralegals who would rather work in an editor than a browser. The private bucket is an implementation detail behind both surfaces, not an access control panel we hand to clients.

Say plainly what the mirror is and is not: it is a working copy scoped to your own participation, and the site remains the record. Nothing about having a folder on your laptop changes who can see a matter — the same participation ledger decides both surfaces.

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