Client Requests

Clients can start a new request from the client portal (clients.athenty.com) — a private conversation with your organization for something that is not yet tied to an existing matter. These requests land in Participants ▸ Requests for your team to triage.

Where requests come from

In the client portal, a signed-in client opens the Requests tab and chooses New request. They give a subject and details (the same “Start a new request” screen for every client, regardless of their per-matter role). The request is private to that client and your team.

Triaging a request

On Participants ▸ Requests your team sees every open request with the requester, subject, a preview, and its status:

• Awaiting review — newly received, not yet opened as a matter.
• Opened as matter — converted to a matter (see below).

The Requests tab carries a count badge for requests still awaiting a reply from your team (open requests whose most recent message is from the client).

Open a request to read the full conversation and reply. Replies on a request are always visible to the client who opened it.

Opening a request as a matter

When a request should become real work, choose Open as a matter and pick an existing matter. The conversation moves onto that matter’s Discussions, and from then on your normal per-matter access and message-visibility controls apply. The full request history is preserved through the conversion.

The client who sent the request is added to that matter automatically:

• They are added as a client participant, linked to their saved participant profile — the same profile they already have, never a new or duplicate one.
• They are granted the lowest portal tier (User — matter info and Discussions only; no billing, no approvals). If they were already a participant of the matter, nothing changes — a higher tier is never downgraded.
• The sign-in email they use for the portal is kept as their contact email on the matter, so the matter appears in their portal even when their profile records a different address (see Settings ▸ Client Portal Users).

For a business or organization client, the participant added to the matter is the entity itself — not the individual who happens to be its authorized representative. The representative’s name and email remain the point of contact on that row.

When conversion stops and asks you to decide

Athenty will never attach a guessed or nameless client to a matter. In two cases it stops, changes nothing (the request stays in Awaiting review, the matter is untouched), and asks you to resolve it first.

“Isn’t linked to a saved participant profile.” The requester’s portal sign-in has no participant profile behind it. Create (or open) their profile in Participants, add them to a matter as a client with portal access, then convert again. This is rare — it happens when a profile was deleted after the invite was sent.

“…is used by N different client profiles.” One sign-in address can act for more than one client: an authorized representative who represents two companies signs in with a single email, and a request carries no matter of its own, so Athenty cannot tell which client this request is about. It resolves the question automatically when the target matter already names one of those clients — otherwise it stops and asks. Add the correct client to the matter first, then convert the request.

Notifications

Event	Who is notified
A new request arrives	The client’s Client Introducer (in-app + email) and your Managers (in-app). Owners and admins keep full visibility on the Requests tab but are not pinged on every new request.
Your team replies to the client	The requesting client is notified by email on every reply — both before and after conversion — and sees it in their portal.
The request is opened as a matter	Request notifications stop; the matter’s per-matter Staff Function notification rules take over for that conversation.

Access

Request triage is part of Matter Planner. Owners, admins, and managers see every request; other team members see only the requests from clients they introduced. The client only ever sees the requests they themselves opened.