Participants ▸ Clients

This page documents the Participants ▸ Clients view inside the Matter detail page. The Matter detail page is a two-level tab strip — see Matter detail for the parent overview.

The Clients sub-tab does two jobs:

1. lists the clients (people or entities you represent) on this matter, with their roles and compliance state, and
2. carries every control for this matter’s client portal — the master switch, per-client access levels, invites, and the close-out policy.

Everything below the fold here is what your client sees (or doesn’t) at clients.athenty.com. The client-side view is described in Client portal.

Client portal access (master switch)

At the top of the sub-tab, a Client portal access card controls whether this matter participates in the client portal at all:

• Enable toggle — per-matter. Off means no client can see this matter in the portal, regardless of their per-client grants.
• Send invites — appears when clients have been granted access but not yet invited; one click sends the outstanding invites. Each client row also has its own invite / resend action, so you can work a single client without inviting everyone.

Per-client access levels (Portal access)

Each client row carries a Portal access multi-select. Every client with portal access always gets the base Matter info view; five independent capabilities layer on top:

Capability	What it unlocks in the client’s portal
Matter info (always included)	Overview, shared Critical Dates & legal team
Communications	Discussions — messages & secure attachments
Documents	Shared documents — view & watermarked download
Uploads	Send documents into the matter’s Client Uploads folder
Billing	Invoices, retainer & statements
Approvals	Approve / decline matter requests

Practical notes — each verified against the live access services:

• Per-client, per-matter. The same client can have different capability sets on different matters; the other clients on a matter are unaffected by changes to one row.
• Effective immediately. Toggling a capability (or the whole access grant) applies on the client’s next request — no re-login needed. Switch a client’s access off and the matter leaves their portal at once; switch it back on and it returns with the same capabilities.
• Documents composes with folder sharing. The Documents capability decides whether the client gets a Documents area at all; the per-folder “shared with client” flag decides which folders appear inside it. Both must pass — a Documents-capable client still cannot see files in a folder that isn’t shared. Public share links are a separate channel and are unaffected by either control.
• The updates feed is gated too. “Document shared: …” rows only appear in a client’s matter feed when they hold the Documents capability.
• Uploads is independent of Documents. A client can be upload-only (sends files in without seeing any of the firm’s Drive), view-only, or both. Everything a client uploads lands in a Client Uploads folder in the matter’s Drive — never loose in the matter root — and the file row shows “client name (client)” so provenance is always visible. The matter’s assigned staff get an in-app notification on every client upload.
• Client uploads are append-only. Clients cannot delete, rename, or move what they’ve uploaded — once a file lands it’s part of the matter record, managed by your team from the Drive. Uploads are virus-scanned and format-checked like all Drive files, capped at 100 MB per file with daily per-client limits, and a .zip automatically unpacks into a subfolder mirroring the archive’s structure (each file re-checked individually).
• Reattribution is access-neutral. Changing the matter’s primary client (and changing it back) does not alter who can see what — primary is a matter attribute, not an access level.

When this matter is closed

With the portal enabled, the card also carries the close-out policy — “When this matter is closed” — editable by the Matter Responsible, an Admin, or the Owner:

Mode	What happens at close
Remove access immediately (hard cutoff, default)	The matter leaves every client’s portal on the next request.
30-day grace — notify the client, then remove	The client is emailed the removal date, keeps access for 30 days, and sees a countdown in their portal until access ends.

On the grace path the client’s portal shows the countdown on both the matters list and the matter page (“Access to this matter ends in 12 days (June 21, 2026)”), so the matter never silently disappears. Signed links are revoked immediately either way, and reopening the matter restores portal access unchanged.

Privacy stance

A client who loses access — by toggle, hard close, or an expired grace window — gets “Matter not found” on any saved deep link. The portal returns 404, never 403, so it never confirms that a matter exists to someone who can’t see it.

Related pages

• Client portal (client experience) — what your client sees at each access level
• Matter detail — the parent tab strip
• Participants — org-wide participant directory