Until now, the Portuguese Bar Association only had access to its personal area (a place where they could see their benefits, see and pay their dues, register their turns, among other things) though a non-mobile friendly website. Caixa Mágica won a public contest with the objective of developing an app that would allow the lawyers to access and do almost everything they needed from their day-to-day work and more.
The app was also to be accessed by citizens, in order to see news and events from the Order of Attoneys and find lawyers close to their location. This profile would later gain a feature that allowed citizens to ask questions to lawyers. You can see that project here.
When first opening the app, the user is prompted with a modal to ask for location permitions, always informing why and how the app will use them. The user is then asked to proceed as a lawyer or a citizen. By clicking layer, the user needs to fill the login credentials in a webview, while the citizen does not have a login.
When the user enters the app while logged in, the homepage is shown by default, showing the latest news, upcoming events on the calendar, some shortcuts and the Bar Association contact information.
For the lawyer, the navigation bar is divided by the homepage, calendar, social (chat and groups) and his personal area, while the citizen has the homepage, agenda, "Find a lawyer" and "Consult a Lawyer" sections.
You can find the app's content architecture below:
As you can see, it was quite challenging to organize and develop a complex portal such as this into an app, while keeping it easy to use and understandable by the user.
The app features some key functionalities, such as the lawyer/institution search (left mockup), using a simple search or advanced (filters icon) and using the Google Maps API; the calendar, in which the user can see, save and create (personal) events (middle mockup) and the one-to-one chat, group chat and videocalls, where lawyers can easily share information between themselves and use how they see fit, individually or for their lawyer firm (right mockup).
The personal area however, acts more like a personal backoffice, with the basic functionalities of the Bar Association's Portal:
With this app, laywers can easily keep track of the quotas in debt and the payments done, the honoraries received, scale schedules, check process deadlines and resquest scale replacements in case they cannot make the scale, among other usefull functionalities.
The app was developed iteratively, with constant communication between our team and the Bar Association, validating the app's usability in the end of earch iteration with real lawyers.
