Every client enquiry, onboarded the same professional way
Between a client's first email and the moment real work begins, there is usually a week of requesting information, waiting, re-requesting, and explaining what happens next. DSP CRM replaces that with one branded client portal: each service has its own intake form, each client sees exactly what is still missing, and your team sees the status of every onboarding in one place.
What DSP CRM is
A client management platform with a client-facing portal. It holds who a client is, what they asked for, what they have sent you, what they have paid, and where their process stands.
Who it is for
Practices that sell defined, repeatable legal services: residency applications, property transactions, company formation, trademark filings, fixed-scope advisory and monthly retainers.
What it replaces
The email thread, the WhatsApp attachments, the shared folder and the onboarding spreadsheet. Not your case management system and not your certified invoicing software.
Where the time actually goes
Every practice handles this differently, but the pattern is familiar.
Enquiries arrive from five places
With no single list of who is still waiting for an answer.
The same information gets asked for twice
Because the first answer is in an email that is now forty messages down.
Documents arrive incomplete
A passport scan, but not the NIF. An address, but not the proof of address.
Someone has to chase
And chasing is unpaid work, usually done by the most expensive person in the room.
Nobody can answer "where is it?"
Not the client, and often not the colleague covering a holiday.
Every lawyer does intake differently
Which makes the process impossible to delegate or standardise.
The same client, two different experiences
The steps happen either way. The question is whether the client walks through them, or your team drags them through.
Nine days, mostly waiting
- Enquiry arrives by email
- Lawyer replies, asks for information
- Client sends part of it
- Lawyer follows up two days later
- More documents requested back a step
- One file by WhatsApp, one by email
- Assistant saves files, updates a spreadsheet
- Client asks: "what happens now?"
- Work begins
One path, visible to both sides
- Client selects a service
- Completes the intake form for that service
- Uploads documents in the same flow
- Pays or signs an engagement step, where it applies
- Matter appears in the team pipeline, assigned automatically
- Client sees status and next step in the portal
- Missing items trigger automated reminders
- Work begins
From enquiry to onboarded, step by step
Seven steps, each one a capability that already exists in DSP CRM today.
The client chooses a service
Residency application, property purchase, company formation, employment consultation. Conditional logic changes the questions based on the answer.
Existing capabilityThe right form opens
Each service has its own fields, its own document list and its own rules. Long forms can be saved and resumed.
Existing capabilityDocuments are collected in the flow
Uploads happen where they are requested and attach to the client record, not to an email someone has to file.
Existing capabilityPayment, where it applies
Fixed fees, consultation fees and monthly retainers through a payment link or subscription. Fiscal invoicing stays in your certified software.
Existing capability, scopedThe matter enters your pipeline
A task or project is created and assigned by rule, with statuses that match your firm's stages.
Existing capabilityThe client gets a portal, not an inbox
Their own space, with your branding, showing what is complete, what is missing and what happens next.
Existing capabilityCommunication stays with the matter
Messages and questions attach to the client record, with history visible to whoever picks it up.
Existing capabilityThe same flow, every client
Built once. Used for every client after that, by anyone on the team.
Book a demoOne system, one onboarding flow per service
A residency application and a property purchase need almost nothing in common at intake. Build them as separate flows in the same system and each client answers only what is relevant.
- Start your residency application
- →
- Personal & family details
- →
- Status & eligibility questions
- →
- Document checklist
- →
- Fee payment
- →
- Matter created
- →
- Progress in portal
Applicants are often abroad and in a different time zone. Save-and-resume accommodates the reality that documents take weeks to gather, and automated reminders handle the follow-up without anyone staying up for it.
The parts that remove the chasing
Form builder
Drag and drop. Different fields for different services, conditional if-then logic, file uploads, and save-and-resume for long forms.
Automated reminders
Outstanding items prompt the client automatically, so following up stops being a person's job.
Payments and retainers
One-off fees, payment links and recurring billing for avenças, through Stripe. Fiscal invoicing stays with your certified software.
Integrations
Zapier and webhooks on all plans, Make on Pro and above, API on the Plus plan. Connect your calendar, accounting tool or document storage.
A Lisbon immigration practice
Imagine a four-person practice in Lisbon handling residency applications, with roughly twenty new enquiries a month. Two of the four are lawyers; two handle client administration.
Today, each enquiry generates a reply, a document request, an average of three follow-ups, and a set of files spread between email and WhatsApp. Nobody can answer "what is outstanding on the Ferreira matter?" without opening three applications.
With DSP CRM, the firm builds one intake flow per service type. The website's "Start your application" button leads to the relevant form. Clients complete what they can, save, return, and upload documents against a visible checklist. Reminders handle the follow-ups. When everything is in, the matter appears in the team's pipeline with the file already assembled.
The administrative staff shift from chasing to reviewing. The lawyers open a complete file instead of assembling one. And the client, often applying from another country, can see exactly where things stand at two in the morning without emailing anyone.
Day one
Enquiry arrives and the client is already completing the right form for their service.
During the week
Documents arrive against a checklist. Reminders, not people, handle what is missing.
When the file is complete
The matter moves into the pipeline, assembled and assigned.
Legal services this fits
The fit is strongest where the service is repeatable and the intake is standardised. It is weakest in litigation-heavy work where every matter is bespoke, and we would rather say so.
Residency & immigration
Structured eligibility intake and a document checklist clients can work through from abroad.
Real estate & property
Transaction details, party identification and property documents collected in one flow.
Company formation
Shareholder details, identification and activity information gathered before the first meeting.
Tax & advisory avenças
Recurring retainers with recurring intake, billed on subscription.
Family law
A private, permissioned channel for sensitive documents, and a clear process for anxious clients.
Employment law
Separate intake flows for employer-side and employee-side matters, branching at the first question.
Trademarks & IP
Fixed scope, fixed fee, fixed document set. The closest legal analogue to a productized service.
Fixed-scope consulting
Packaged advisory sold through a branded checkout, with defined scope and defined onboarding.
What changes
For the firm
- Intake stops depending on who happens to answer the enquiry
- Administrative staff review files rather than assemble them
- Onboarding status is visible without asking anyone
- Holiday and absence cover stops being a handover crisis
- New services launch as a new form, not a new process
- Recurring services bill themselves
- Client data sits in one system instead of four
For the client
- One place to send everything, once
- A clear list of what is still needed
- Visible progress without having to ask
- A professional first impression from the first click
- Access on their own schedule, from any country
- Fewer "just checking in" emails in both directions