Law Surface Launches Virtual Users: A Smarter Way to Connect Legal Teams with the Entire Organization
Legal work rarely begins inside the legal department. A contract review may come from HR, a legal opinion may be requested by Finance, a compliance matter may originate from Operations, and management may need to submit a legal request directly to the legal team.
The challenge is providing these departments with a direct and structured way to communicate with the legal team without giving every employee full access to the organization’s legal management system.
Law Surface has introduced Virtual Users to solve this challenge
Virtual Users allow organizations and law firms to add users who can submit and follow internal requests without requiring a paid user account and without giving them access to cases, clients, legal files, or other confidential information stored within Law Surface.
What Are Virtual Users in Law Surface?
Virtual Users are free, limited-access users designed specifically for communication and request management.
Unlike licensed Law Surface users who work directly with cases, matters, documents, clients, billing, reports, and other legal management functions, Virtual Users have access only to the functions required to communicate with the legal team.
A Virtual User can:
- Submit internal requests to the legal department or authorized team.
- Follow the status and progress of submitted requests.
- Add procedures and updates related to their requests.
- Receive notifications when there are updates or actions on a request.
Most importantly, Virtual Users cannot access cases, legal matters, client information, or other data stored within the Law Surface system.
This creates a controlled communication channel between legal teams and the rest of the organization.
Why Virtual Users Matter for Legal Departments
In-house legal departments frequently support many more employees than the number of people working within the legal team.
For example, a company may have 500 employees but only 10 members of its legal department. Employees across HR, Finance, Procurement, Operations, Compliance, Sales, and Management may regularly need assistance from those 10 legal professionals.
Traditionally, these requests arrive through different channels:
- Email.
- Phone calls.
- WhatsApp messages.
- Meetings.
- Spreadsheets.
- Informal conversations.
This makes legal request management difficult. Requests can be missed, duplicated, delayed, or become difficult to track.
With Law Surface Virtual Users, employees from different departments can submit their requests directly through a structured system.
The legal department can then receive, manage, process, and track those requests from within its existing legal management platform.
One Legal Request System for the Entire Organization
Consider an organization where several departments regularly interact with the legal team.
- Human Resources may request an employment contract review or legal advice regarding an employee matter.
- Finance may need legal assistance with a financial dispute or agreement.
- Procurement may submit a supplier contract for review.
- Operations may request legal guidance concerning an operational issue.
- Management may request a legal opinion or ask the legal department to review specific documents.
Instead of sending these requests through separate emails or messages, each department can use a Virtual User account to communicate directly with the legal department.
The result is a centralized internal legal request management system where requests can be submitted, tracked, updated, and completed through a defined workflow.
No Paid Account Required for Every Requester
Providing full legal software accounts to every employee who occasionally needs assistance from the legal department is often unnecessary.
Most employees do not need access to legal cases, matter management, documents, billing, reports, or other advanced legal functions.
They simply need a secure way to communicate with the legal team.
Virtual Users address this problem by allowing organizations to extend Law Surface beyond the legal department without requiring a paid account for every internal requester.
Licensed users continue to manage the organization’s legal work, while Virtual Users provide the connection between those legal professionals and other departments.
Designed Around Legal Data Confidentiality
Legal departments handle highly confidential information.
Giving an employee the ability to submit a legal request should not automatically give that employee access to the organization’s legal database.
Law Surface separates these permissions.
Virtual Users are designed for internal requests and related interactions. They do not receive general access to cases, legal matters, client information, or other confidential system data.
This means organizations can create a broader internal legal service channel while maintaining controlled access to sensitive legal information.
Benefits for Corporate and Government Legal Affairs Departments
Virtual Users can be particularly valuable for corporate legal departments, government legal affairs departments, public entities, insurance companies, and organizations with multiple departments or branches.
Instead of treating Law Surface as software used exclusively by the legal department, organizations can use it as the central point through which employees communicate with their legal team.
This can help organizations:
- Centralize internal legal requests.
- Reduce legal requests received through scattered emails and messages.
- Improve communication between legal and non-legal departments.
- Maintain a clear history of requests and actions.
- Allow requesters to follow their requests without repeatedly contacting the legal team.
- Improve accountability and visibility over internal legal services.
- Protect confidential legal data through limited user permissions.
- Extend access to more departments without purchasing full accounts for occasional requesters.
For organizations with centralized legal affairs departments serving multiple business units, this can significantly improve the way legal services are requested and delivered internally.
Virtual Users for Law Firms
The feature is also relevant to law firms that need structured communication between different teams without providing every participant with full access to the firm’s case management environment.
A law firm may have administrative staff or other internal users who need to submit requests, follow their progress, and receive notifications but do not need access to the firm’s complete client and case database.
Virtual Users provide a controlled way to include these users in relevant workflows while keeping access to legal information restricted.
This is particularly useful for larger law firms where responsibilities are distributed across legal, administrative, financial, operational, and management teams.
From Legal Case Management to Legal Service Management
Modern legal departments need more than case management software.
They need a system that manages the relationship between the legal department and the organization it serves.
A legal team must be able to answer questions such as:
How many requests are being submitted to the legal department?
Which requests are still being processed?
What actions have been taken?
Can the requesting department follow the request?
Can employees receive updates without repeatedly contacting the legal team?
And, critically, can this happen without exposing confidential cases and legal information?
Virtual Users expand Law Surface’s role from managing legal matters to helping organizations manage the complete flow of legal services between the legal department and other business units.
A Practical Example
Suppose an organization’s HR department needs the legal team to review a new employment agreement.
An authorized HR employee can submit the request through a Virtual User account.
The legal department receives the request within Law Surface and begins processing it.
The requester can follow its progress, participate in the permitted request workflow, and receive notifications when relevant actions or updates occur.
At the same time, the HR employee does not gain access to unrelated litigation, cases, legal documents, client information, or other confidential records managed by the legal department.
The same model can be applied across Finance, Procurement, Operations, Compliance, Management, and other departments.
Building a More Connected Legal Department
The launch of Virtual Users reflects a broader objective: making legal operations more connected without compromising access control.
Legal departments should not have to choose between giving employees full system access and relying on disconnected emails or messages.
With Virtual Users, Law Surface provides a third approach: limited, purpose-built access for internal legal requests.
Employees get a direct channel to the legal team.
Legal professionals get structured requests inside their legal management environment.
Organizations get better visibility and control.
And confidential legal data remains restricted to authorized users.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Virtual User in Law Surface?
A Virtual User is a free, limited-access user who can interact with internal request workflows without requiring a paid Law Surface user account or receiving access to the organization’s cases and other confidential legal data.
Do Virtual Users require a paid Law Surface license?
No. Virtual Users are provided free of charge according to the Virtual User allocation available with the organization’s Law Surface account.
What can a Virtual User do?
Virtual Users can submit internal requests, follow their requests, add related procedures or updates where permitted, and receive notifications about request activity.
Can Virtual Users see cases in Law Surface?
No. Virtual Users do not have access to the organization’s cases or general legal data stored within the system.
Who can use Virtual Users?
They are particularly useful for employees and departments that need to communicate with an organization’s legal department but do not require a full legal management account. This can include HR, Finance, Procurement, Operations, Compliance, Management, and other business units.
Are Virtual Users useful for law firms?
Yes. Law firms can use Virtual Users for internal participants who need to submit and follow requests without providing them with full access to client and case information.
How do Virtual Users help an in-house legal department?
They provide a centralized channel for receiving and tracking legal requests from across the organization. This can reduce reliance on email, messages, and other fragmented communication channels while maintaining restricted access to confidential legal information.
Law Surface: Connecting Legal Teams with the Organizations They Serve
Law Surface is a legal management platform designed for law firms, corporate legal departments, government legal affairs departments, and other legal teams.
With the introduction of Virtual Users, organizations can now connect more departments directly with their legal teams while keeping access to sensitive legal information controlled.
Virtual Users make it possible for the entire organization to communicate with the legal department—without requiring every requester to become a paid legal system user.