This guide is for attorneys, firm owners, paralegals, docketing staff, and anyone on the firm side who needs a step-by-step explanation of how the attorney workspace is organized, including the secure external-recipient share flow that remains attorney-owned.
Main workspace /attorney/dashboard26 screenshot-backed walkthroughs
At a glance
Use the attorney workspace to onboard the firm, manage representations, run deadlines, work matters, move protests and CIT matters through explicit legal-operating tracks, and control bounded external matter sharing.
Set up the attorney workspace before expecting matter access
Attorney onboarding captures the identity, firm, and filing-baseline data needed to create the attorney profile. Matter visibility comes later through representation, authority, and conflict review.
/attorney/onboarding
Complete the identity, firm, and filing-baseline intake.
Upload the evidence or credential materials the review workflow needs.
Wait for the profile to move through pending review before assuming the full workspace is active.
Attorney approval is separate from importer and broker approval.
Client representation and matter visibility are separate later steps even after onboarding is submitted.
Attorney onboarding is the first stop. It creates the attorney profile and firm context, but does not automatically grant live matter access.
Use Dashboard for the firm-wide operating view
The attorney dashboard is the firm's control room. It shows matter-stage posture, filtering tools, credential health, and next actions without forcing users into one matter immediately.
/attorney/dashboard
Start here each day to understand current matter posture across intake, protest drafting, filed protests, CBP wait states, and CIT-active matters.
Use the filters and reusable views to narrow the dashboard to the matters or owners you care about.
Check credential-health and access-status cards before troubleshooting downstream matter visibility.
Dashboard answers what is active now.
It is the best place to spot stage imbalance, risk concentration, or missing setup.
The dashboard consolidates matter volume, value, and filtering. If a user only learns one attorney screen first, it should be this one.
Move from client relationship to authority packet to conflict clearance
The attorney workspace keeps representation state explicit. A client relationship is not treated as fully operational until authority documents and conflict handling are in the right state.
Use Clients and Matters to review importer relationships, pending representations, and matter visibility.
Open the representation detail page to inspect status history, scope, and how the relationship was requested or activated.
Use Authority Packet to upload and version the documents that control whether the representation can actually advance.
Run Conflict Review separately so restricted matters stay visible as pending rather than silently mixed into active work.
Representation, authority, and conflict state are related but not interchangeable.
Keeping them separate makes ethical-wall and document-control issues easier to audit.
Clients and Matters is the intake layer for representation relationships, active matter coverage, and pending client access.Representation detail is where relationship history, scope, and current access posture are reviewed before the team moves deeper into matter work.Authority Packet is where document control becomes operational. Use it when the question is whether the representation can progress.Conflict Review keeps restricted matters visible as their own workflow rather than letting them disappear inside the general client queue.
Run deadlines and workload from Docket and Queues
The attorney workspace separates time-based risk from owner-based operations. Docket answers what is due; Queues answers who is carrying the work.
/attorney/docket/attorney/queues
Open Docket for one ordered list of statutory deadlines, court dates, and missing-data blockers.
Use Queues when the problem is ownership, staffing, or bulk follow-up rather than legal timing itself.
Pair these views whenever the question is both what is due and who owns it.
Docket is date-driven.
Queues is operator-driven.
Docket surfaces the deadline ledger in one place so the team can triage statutory, court, and internal timing risk together.Queues is the workload-management layer. Use it when the problem is assignment, not legal posture.
Use the matter workspace for evidence, notes, sharing, and client communications
Matter pages keep the working record together without flattening every legal and operational concern into one unreadable screen.
Open the main matter page first to orient the team around posture, assignments, value, and timeline context.
Use Evidence when the immediate blocker is missing documents or incomplete readiness, not legal strategy.
Use Notes for privileged internal collaboration and Sharing for controlled external access to the matter.
Use Client Communications when outreach, requests, and tracked response handling need to stay attached to the matter record.
Matter pages are the operational spine of the attorney workspace.
Supporting tabs keep collaboration, evidence, and external access explicit instead of hiding them in generic comments.
The main matter page is the operational spine of the attorney workspace. Use it to orient the team before branching into evidence, notes, protests, or CIT pages.Evidence keeps document readiness explicit so the team can tell the difference between legal strategy work and a missing-file blocker.Notes is the privileged internal collaboration surface for the matter team.Sharing is where external access is scoped deliberately instead of being improvised through file forwarding.Client Communications keeps tracked outreach and response history attached to the matter record itself.
Run protest drafting, filing, and decisions as explicit legal workflows
DutyClaims does not flatten protest work into one generic task. Drafting, filing operations, and decision handling each have their own surfaces.
Start New Protest Draft when the team needs a durable draft that survives across sessions.
Use protest detail for the working file: legal summary, packet assembly, selected entries, and readiness state.
Move to Filing when the matter is operationally ready to leave drafting and become an outbound filing workflow.
Use Decision to track the outcome state and next procedural turn after CBP action.
Protests are not collapsed into a single generic task board.
Separate pages keep drafting, filing, and decision state visible.
New Protest Draft is the durable drafting entry point when a matter moves from general posture into protest work.Protest detail is the working file for drafting, packet assembly, filing exports, and outcome visibility.The Filing page is where the protest moves from drafting posture into operational filing readiness.Decision state stays explicit so the team can carry the matter cleanly into post-decision next steps.
Carry CIT matters from readiness intake through active court posture
CIT work stays distinct from protest work. Intake, open-case gating, status, docket, and filings each have their own surface so the court record remains readable.
Use CIT readiness intake before the court case is opened so threshold questions stay explicit.
Use the open-status gateway when the matter is between protest posture and active court posture.
Use CIT status for the overall case state, docket for dated obligations, and filings for the court-paper record.
CIT posture is a separate operating track from protest posture.
The court record stays visible because intake, status, docket, and filings are separate surfaces.
CIT intake is where readiness questions stay explicit before the matter becomes an active court case.The open-status page bridges the matter from protest posture into live court posture without hiding the transition.CIT status keeps overall court posture explicit instead of burying it inside generic matter notes.CIT docket is the date-driven view for court deadlines and filing commitments.CIT filings keeps the court-paper record and filing history visible as its own track of work.
Use secure matter share links for external recipients instead of adding portal seats
Shared recipients are a controlled extension of the attorney workflow, not a new top-level portal role. The secure-link surface exists so outside reviewers can see exactly what was shared without needing the full attorney workspace.
/shared/attorney/[token]
Use matter sharing inside the attorney workspace to issue a scoped external link when outside counsel, a client contact, or another recipient needs a bounded view.
Treat the shared-link page as the recipient experience, not as a substitute for attorney, admin, importer, or broker onboarding.
Review the secure-link screen whenever someone asks what an external recipient can actually see before assuming they need a full account.
External recipients are not portal seats.
The secure-link surface stays under attorney guide ownership because the attorney team controls what is shared.
Secure matter-share links are the recipient-side surface for bounded external review. They stay under the attorney workflow rather than becoming a separate portal role.
Use reports, firm team, and billing for firm-level operating control
Leadership, seat governance, and matter-level billing each live in their own explicit surface rather than being tucked inside the dashboard.
Open Reports when leadership needs throughput, outcomes, or capacity patterns across the portfolio.
Use Firm Team to manage seats, staff invitations, and which firm members can operate in the workspace.
Use matter billing when cost, fee, or invoice posture must stay attached to one legal matter instead of being tracked off-platform.
Reports are for portfolio-level pattern recognition.
Firm Team is for seat governance.
Billing stays explicit at the matter level.
Reports shift the view from one matter to the whole firm, which is useful for staffing, outcomes, and workload review.Firm Team is the seat-governance layer for inviting staff, reviewing membership, and managing who can work inside the attorney portal.Matter billing keeps fee posture attached to the legal record instead of forcing the firm into a separate shadow tracker.