What's New in 1.1.0
#Overview
Version 1.1.0 adds a matter board with your own stages and automations, custom fields for case details,
two-way client texts (SMS) with reminders, and LigdiCash, a fourth payment gateway for mobile money in West
and Central Africa. It also makes every screen work on phones and tablets, and makes the public sites much easier
for search engines and AI assistants to find, read and show in results. See Upgrading from 1.0
for the steps to take after you update.
#Matter board and stages
- Matters → Board shows open matters as cards in stage columns. Drag a card (or use Move to… on a phone or
keyboard) to move it, with Undo.
- Settings → Stages sets your stages: names, colours, which ones clients see and what they are called, and a
separate pipeline per practice area if you need one. Every new firm starts with Intake, Engaged, In progress,
Resolved and Cancelled.
- Stage automations create tasks, email Smart Forms or message the client when a matter enters a stage.
- Client portal matters show "Step 2 of 4 · Engaged" with a progress bar.
- Case Tasks → Board gives tasks a column per status, opening on your own tasks.
See Matter Board & Stages.
#Custom fields
- Settings → Custom fields adds case details such as the court or a case number, per practice area, in seven
types. Up to two can be pinned to board cards.
- Values are edited on the matter's Overview tab, and both the list and the board can filter by them.
- A Smart Form question can fill a case detail: accepted answers are copied onto the matter, never over a
value staff typed.
See Custom Fields.
#Client texts (SMS)
- Twilio, MSG91 and Africa's Talking. Firms use the platform's account (paid in SMS credits) or their own keys.
- Consent first: an unticked box on booking and chat, a switch in the client portal, and a staff switch that
records how the client agreed. STOP and START work in English, French and Spanish.
- Two-way: client replies land in Client Inbox, and staff reply by SMS with a live length and credit count
and delivery ticks.
- Settings → Messaging walks through setup, sends a test SMS, and keeps a log of every client message.
- Super Admin → SMS holds the platform account, per-firm usage, credit top-ups and per-country rates. Plans
get an SMS switch, a credit allowance per billing period and a daily cap.
See Client Texts (SMS) and SMS.
#Reminders
The old check-in and check-out emails are replaced by two reminders that go by SMS, WhatsApp or email, whichever the
client has agreed to:
- Appointment reminder: 24 hours before a hearing, consultation or client-visible meeting.
- Payment reminder: the day before an unpaid invoice is due, and 3 days after.
Each can be turned off under Settings → Notifications. A rescheduled hearing gets a new reminder, and a paid
invoice gets none.
#LigdiCash payments
Firms can now take payments through LigdiCash, alongside Stripe, Razorpay and PayPal. Clients pay by mobile money
(Orange Money, Moov, MTN, Wave and others) or card in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal,
Guinea and DR Congo.
- Connect it under Settings → Payments → LigdiCash with the API key and API token of your LigdiCash project.
No webhook setup is needed.
- CFA francs (XOF): fees are charged in whole CFA francs. Firms that price in another currency are converted at
their own exchange rate, and XOF is now in the currency list.
- Every payment is double-checked: a matter is confirmed only after LawyerPara asks LigdiCash directly, so a forged
link or notification cannot mark a booking as paid.
- Mobile money approvals: if a client returns before approving the payment on their phone, they see a "waiting
for approval" message, and the matter confirms by itself once the payment clears.
- Record Payment on invoices now lists PayPal and LigdiCash.
- Subscription payments by LigdiCash: the Super Admin can connect the platform's LigdiCash account under
Settings → Payments. Firms then pay subscription invoices, and their renewal, by mobile money from their
Billing page. Paying a renewal moves the subscription to its next period.
See Payments for setup and testing.
#Mobile and tablet
Every Super Admin, Firm Admin and public page was checked at phone (375px), tablet (768px) and laptop (1024px and
1280px) widths.
- Page headers wrap their buttons under the title instead of squeezing them, and button labels stay on one line.
- Tables scroll sideways inside their card instead of being cut off (Translations, Expenses, Forms, Localization,
Knowledge Base and others).
- Forms with a side panel (Add or Edit Firm, Create Invoice) show the panel under the form below 1280px.
- Matters list and Smart Form submissions use the card and list-then-detail layouts on tablets.
- Firm Settings shows its section menu as a swipe strip on phones and tablets.
- Smart Form builder stacks the field palette, document and settings on narrow screens, and uses slimmer side
panels on laptops. It no longer needs a 1024px-wide window.
- Public Smart Form page shows the questions first, then the live document, on phones.
- Firm website menu no longer makes the page wider than the phone screen, and its close (X) button is visible.
- Platform site menu on phones matches the light header, lines up with the logo and scrolls, so every link and
button can be reached on a short screen.
- Hero buttons on outline-style website templates are readable on dark photos.
- Admin screens no longer jump or turn blank when you tap a hidden choice such as a plan or firm type.
#Search engines (SEO)
Everything below is generated from each firm's own settings, pages and practice areas. Nothing needs setting up for
it to work. See SEO & Search Visibility for details.
- Every language can be found in search. Each language a firm enables gets its own address (
?hl=fr) with its own
canonical link, and every page lists its other languages (hreflang). The same applies to the platform homepage,
the Smart Forms page and platform pages.
- Firms on their own domain now serve their own
robots.txt, sitemap.xml and llms.txt, and their canonical
links use the clean domain.
- Richer sitemaps list every language version, plus practice-area and hero photos. The platform sitemap now also
lists the Smart Forms page and every documentation page.
- Better link previews on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, WhatsApp and Slack. Pages fall back to the page photo, the firm
cover, the home page hero or a practice-area photo. Shared Smart Form links show a title and description, and stay
hidden from search.
- One main heading per page. Website pages without a hero block now promote their first heading, so every page has
exactly one
<h1>.
- Structured data describes each firm as a legal service with opening hours, areas served and practice areas. The
platform homepage describes LawyerPara as software, priced from your active plans. Documentation pages are marked up
as technical articles.
- Documentation is readable without JavaScript, so search engines and AI assistants see each page's real title,
description and text.
- Descriptions are trimmed at a word boundary to fit search results, and page titles use " | " as the separator.
- Admin and sign-in screens tell search engines not to index them, and
robots.txt also keeps client-portal and
matter-management pages out of search.
#Fixes
- The practice calendar no longer fails when filtered by practice area, and consultation requests show there again.
- The client portal invoice heading is readable on dark website templates.
- Firms' Billing page now lists their subscription invoices. They were being filtered out and never shown.
- The booking page now shows why an online payment did not go through ("Payment was not completed", "We could not
start the payment"). These messages were being dropped before.
/documentation (without a version) opens the documentation again on every web server.- Firm website text no longer contains wording from the hotel product this app grew out of ("Book your stay",
check-in times, nightly rates). Meta text is rewritten in English, French, Spanish and German.
- The registration page shows the free-trial length again, matching the trial every new firm receives.
#Upgrading from 1.0
- Upload the new files, then run
php artisan migrate (adds the stage, custom field and messaging tables, a column
for gateway references and the LigdiCash payment method) and php artisan optimize:clear.
- Make sure the task scheduler runs every minute (
* * * * * php artisan schedule:run). Texts and reminders are
sent by it.
- Documentation screenshots moved from
public/documentation/images/ to public/images/documentation/. If you
use them in custom pages or landing-page overrides, update the path. Delete the old public/documentation/ folder
if it is still there, otherwise /documentation will not open on some servers.
- If you customised the English, French, Spanish or German website strings under Languages & Currency, check the
services and practice-area meta text, which changed in this release.
Documentation links that still use /documentation/1.0/ redirect to the current version automatically.
#Best Practices
- After updating, submit
https://your-domain/sitemap.xml in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Firms on their own domain should submit
https://their-domain/sitemap.xml as well.