Your case, and a login to it
Co-counsel, referrals, or a single motion. You get a login to your own case — documents both directions, the deadlines I am watching with the source of each one, and the Rule 1.04(f) fee-division consent shown on the front page or flagged as missing.
I take Texas procedural work from other lawyers three ways: as co-counsel on a case you keep, as a referral you hand over, or as a discrete piece of work with a deliverable — a motion, a response, a plea to the jurisdiction, a research memo. In all three you get an account in the same portal a Chapter 11 trustee uses, scoped to your case and nothing else.
What the login gives you
The case overview is the first screen: what is due next, what has been filed or exchanged since you last looked, and whether the paperwork between us is signed. Under it —
- Documents, both directions. Upload what I need; download what I file. Every read and write is logged, including mine, and the log is yours to see.
- The dates I am watching. Every deadline shows the document or docket entry it came from. A date with no source is not a deadline, it is a rumour, so this portal will not show you one.
- Your people, on your terms. You invite your own associates and staff and set what each of them may do. I do not hold your password and cannot set it — nobody at this firm can.
- Two-factor, not optional. An authenticator app is required on every login, without exception. Your client's file is behind it.
Fees, and the rule that governs them
A division of fees between lawyers who are not in the same firm is unenforceable in Texas unless the client consents in writing to the division and the share each lawyer will receive — Tex. Disciplinary R. Prof. Conduct 1.04(f). That consent is a document, it has a date, and until it exists there is no fee split to argue about. So the portal puts it on the case's front page: recorded with its date, or flagged as missing. It is the first thing I ask for and the first thing you will see if it is outstanding.
Discrete procedural work is not a fee division at all — it is a flat fee I quote before I start, billed to you or to your client as you prefer. The schedule is on the fees page.
How access starts
Send the file. Court, cause number, what is set, and one sentence on what is stuck — the same intake everything else here goes through. You get a same-day read on which mechanism fits and what it costs. If we take the matter on, the account is opened at the same time and the invitation goes to whatever address you tell me; you choose your own password from the email.
Sending a file does not create an attorney–client relationship and does not put me on your case. Nothing is being watched on your behalf until an engagement is signed, and a matter under evaluation says exactly that at the top of its own page in the portal, so there is never a question about which state a file is in.
Conflicts
I run the conflict check before I read the substance, not after. If it comes back dirty you get told that and nothing else, and the file goes back unread.
Contact
407 W Liberty Ave, Round Rock, TX 78664
(214) 673-1960 ·
jhenry@jhenrylaw.com