A legal services platform designed to reduce friction between clients and legal professionals during the early stages of legal and notarial processes.
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Starting a legal process can be intimidating. Clients may not know what information they need to provide, which documents are required, who is handling their request, or what happens after submitting a case.
At the same time, legal professionals often spend valuable time requesting missing information, explaining processes, organizing documents, and keeping clients updated. Abogato explores how technology can make this first interaction more structured for both sides.
The challenge was not simply to create a website for lawyers. The product needed to support a real workflow involving different users, permissions, documents, revisions, and legal processes while remaining understandable to someone without legal knowledge.
How might we make the first stages of a legal case easier to understand for clients while giving legal professionals enough structure and control to manage each request efficiently?
I worked across the complete product lifecycle, combining design and development. This allowed me to evaluate decisions from usability, technical, and operational perspectives.
Before designing screens, I mapped how a legal request evolves after a client contacts a professional. This revealed that a case could not behave like a simple form submission: it needed history, status, revisions, responsibilities, and clear communication between both sides.
Visibility of status became one of the main UX principles. Both sides needed to see the same case through interfaces adapted to their responsibilities.
The ticket system became the backbone of the platform. Each request behaves as an evolving case rather than a one-time submission.
Clients provide information and documents while lawyers review, approve, return with comments, or close the request. Corrections create a new version instead of overwriting the previous one, preserving a clear history of the interaction.
The interface communicates the next action in plain language instead of exposing internal legal terminology. The goal is to reduce uncertainty without hiding the system’s structure.
The platform expanded beyond ticket management into a connected set of tools for case work.
Documents remain connected to their client, request, and case context.
The system supports consultations with public information sources relevant to Costa Rican legal work.
Clients, lawyers, and administrators receive capabilities based on their responsibilities.
Important changes are surfaced so users do not need to constantly check the platform.
A guided assistant helps users understand common processes and navigate the platform.
Many UX decisions had direct architectural consequences. Case revisions required previous versions to be preserved, while multiple roles required authorization to be enforced by the backend rather than only hidden in the interface.
The result uses a Nuxt frontend, Node.js and Express services, PostgreSQL for persistent data, and containerized deployment.
I tested the main workflows with users and iterated on terminology, interactions, and the relationship between case status and available actions.
Abogato evolved into a platform where clients and legal professionals interact through a structured workflow rather than fragmented conversations.
For clients, the experience focuses on guidance and clarity. For lawyers, it focuses on organization, traceability, and control. The result brings onboarding, ticket management, document workflows, legal information tools, permissions, notifications, and administration into one ecosystem.
The workflow can be technically complex without requiring the interface to feel complex.
Communicating what is happening can be as important as allowing users to perform actions.
Versioning, permissions, and workflow states connect interaction decisions directly to the backend.
Every important interaction has consequences for another user on the opposite side of the workflow.
Screens from the product, covering its main flows and interface details.