Thannhauser & Ulbricht

A law partnership of the old kind, with a client portal of the current one: your matter, your documents and your solicitor, in one place.

Request a consultation What the portal does
  • Partner-led matters
  • Secure client portal
  • Confidential by default

The question every client asks, answered without having to ask it

In most matters, the law is not the difficult part for the client. The difficult part is the silence between one letter and the next — the weeks in which something is certainly happening, but nobody can say what.

This practice was built around correspondence files, bound bundles and a partner who reads every page of them. None of that has changed. What has changed is that a client no longer has to telephone the office to learn where a matter stands. The same file the partnership works from is visible to the client it belongs to, updated as the work is done rather than summarised afterwards.

So the first conversation is still a conversation, held properly and without a clock running in the background. After it, you have an account on our client portal, and the matter stops being something you wait to hear about.

What the client portal carries

The status of your matter

Each matter has a running record: the stage it has reached, what was last filed or sent, and what the practice is waiting on. Written in plain sentences, not case-management codes.

Documents, both directions

Upload the contract, the correspondence or the photographs we have asked for, and read the drafts and executed copies we return. Every version stays on the file where you can find it again.

Messages to your legal team

Questions go to the people actually handling the matter — the partner and the fee earner named on your file — rather than to a general inbox that has to route them first.

Appointments with your solicitor

See the times your solicitor has opened for client meetings and take one, in chambers or by telephone, without an exchange of five emails to find an hour.

Invoices and what is outstanding

Every invoice rendered on the matter, what it covers, what has been paid and what remains. Disbursements are itemised, so a bill is never a single unexplained figure.

Dates that matter

Hearing dates, filing deadlines and limitation dates on your matter appear on the file, and you are told when one moves.

How instructions are taken

The arrangements clients most often ask for by name. Each one includes portal access for the duration of the matter.

Most requested

Initial consultation

A first meeting with a partner to hear the matter out and say honestly whether, and how, the practice can act.

  • Conflict check before the meeting
  • Review of the papers you bring
  • A written note of what we discussed
  • A clear statement of the options
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Ongoing representation

The practice acts for you on a single matter from instruction to conclusion, with one partner responsible throughout.

  • A named partner and fee earner
  • Correspondence and negotiation
  • Court and tribunal work where required
  • Portal access for the whole matter
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Document review and drafting

A contract, lease, settlement or set of terms read line by line, marked up and explained in writing.

  • Marked-up draft returned to the portal
  • A plain-language note of the risks
  • One round of revisions
  • A call to go through the mark-up
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Standing retainer

For businesses that need counsel available rather than instructed afresh each time a question arises.

  • A reserved point of contact
  • Several matters under one portal account
  • Consolidated invoicing
  • Annual review of the arrangement
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Fees are set in the engagement letter after the first conversation, once the scope of the matter is clear. Nothing is charged before that letter is signed.

Privilege does not stop at the login screen

A client file is privileged, and a portal that holds one has to be built on that basis rather than adapted to it afterwards. Access is granted per matter and per person: you see the files you are a party to, and the practice sees who opened what and when.

Messages sent through the portal stay inside it. They are part of the file, filed with the correspondence, which is also why we would rather you sent the sensitive page here than attached it to an ordinary email.

There is one more reason for all of this, and it is less technical. When a client can read the file, the file gets written more carefully — and so does the advice. The partnership has found that a good discipline.

If you would rather not use it

You are not obliged to. Clients who prefer post, telephone and a meeting in chambers are served exactly as they always were, and the portal simply sits there unopened.

From first enquiry to an open file

  1. Send the enquiry

    Tell us, in a line or two, what the matter concerns. No papers are needed yet, and nothing you send commits you to instructing the practice.

  2. Conflict check

    Before anyone reads further, we check the matter against our existing clients. If we cannot act, we say so at once and point you elsewhere.

  3. The first conversation

    A partner hears the matter out, in chambers or by telephone, and tells you what it is likely to involve and what it is likely to cost.

  4. Engagement letter and portal access

    Scope, responsibility and fees are set out in writing. Once it is signed, your portal account is opened and the file appears in it.

  5. The matter proceeds

    Work is recorded on the file as it is done. You read it where it sits, and ask your questions on the same page as the answer.

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Leave your name and an address we can reply to, and a partner will take it from there.

  • A member of the partnership reads every enquiry — it does not go to a call centre.
  • We run a conflict check before replying, and tell you plainly if we cannot act.
  • The first reply sets out next steps and what the first meeting would cover.

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