What tortlconnect is becoming.

I

Roadmap

Richer filters, more verified facts.

Today the consumer narrows the directory by a handful of neutral, verifiable facts — location, language, case type, whether the attorney is taking clients. Every one of them is a fact the consumer can check, not a judgment tortl makes on their behalf. The directory shows every attorney who clears the bar in a random order that rotates daily; the filters are how the consumer, and only the consumer, narrows what they see.

The roadmap here is more of that: additional filterable attributes, each one neutral and verifiable, each one labeled by source so the consumer knows what is checked against bar data and what an attorney has attested about themselves. The point is never to reorder the list for the consumer — it is to give the consumer more honest ways to narrow it themselves.

The only person who ranks these attorneys is you. Every filter we add is another way for you to do it — never a way for us to do it for you.

This is the item most directly aligned with what tortlconnect exists to do. A directory that decides nothing is only as useful as the tools it hands the consumer to decide for themselves — so those tools are where the work goes.

II

Roadmap

Native attorney apps. iOS, Android, desktop.

The consumer side of tortl is a native iPhone and iPad app. The attorney side currently lives in a web dashboard. That asymmetry is deliberate for now — attorneys spend the day in front of monitors — but a mature attorney workflow demands tools that travel with them.

Native iOS and Android apps come next. They are designed for the twenty minutes between a court appearance and a deposition, when an attorney wants to scan the morning's inquiries, accept the ones clearly theirs to take, and ask a clarifying question of the rest. The desktop app — Mac and Windows — follows. It is what makes tortlconnect a first-class workspace rather than a tab in a browser.

III

Roadmap

A consumer-facing intake portal.

The match makes the introduction. The intake portal turns the introduction into a case file.

By the time a consumer reaches a tortlconnect-listed attorney, they have already filled in the bones of their case through the tortl app — scene photos, GPS, voice notes, insurance card, declarations page, declared injuries. That is enough to send an inquiry. It is not enough to formally open representation.

The intake portal is the layer between match and active case. Each tortlconnect attorney gets a branded, walkthrough-style intake flow that the consumer completes after engaging — collecting the records authorizations, employer and lost-wage information, witness contacts, prior medical history, conflict-check data, engagement letter signature, and contingency fee acknowledgment that turn an inquiry into a workable file. The consumer completes it at their own pace, from their phone, between hospital visits.

The attorney receives a structured case file, not a transcription of a forty-minute phone call. Records requests are pre-signed. HIPAA authorizations are routed. Engagement letters land already executed. The first substantive conversation between attorney and client is about the case — not about paperwork.

IV

Roadmap

Case-management integrations.

Most PI attorneys already run their practice on Clio, MyCase, Smokeball, PracticePanther, or a stack built around one of them. A tortlconnect match should land directly in that system, not in a separate inbox.

First-class integrations push accepted matches into the attorney's case-management platform with the consumer-side intake already populated — scene photos, GPS, police report attachments, insurance carrier details, declared injuries. Conflict checks run against the attorney's existing client list before the inquiry is accepted. The attorney's first interaction with the consumer is a substantive one, not a re-keying exercise.

V

Roadmap

Medical records request automation.

Requesting medical records is one of the most consistently painful parts of PI practice — HIPAA-compliant authorizations, provider- specific request formats, weeks of follow-up, intermittent responses. It is also one of the most automatable.

tortlconnect's records module produces signed authorization packets directly from the consumer's tortl account, routes them to the named providers, and tracks the response. The attorney sees a single dashboard for the case's records pipeline — what is in, what is outstanding, what is overdue — instead of an email chain with their paralegal.

VI

Roadmap

A co-counsel marketplace.

Some cases an attorney takes on are better served as co-counsel arrangements — a sole practitioner who can intake but needs trial muscle, a firm with the volume but not the appellate expertise. Today these handoffs happen by phone, by personal relationship, and by uneven fee splits.

The co-counsel marketplace lets tortlconnect-listed attorneys offer cases to one another at standardized terms. The offering attorney chooses who to hand off to; tortl verifies and lists, it does not rank the attorney-to-attorney handoff any more than it ranks the consumer-facing directory. A standardized fee split is the default and is documented in writing. The consumer is informed before the handoff happens.

VII

Roadmap

Carrier-portal automation.

After the consumer engages an attorney, the case lives partly inside the insurance carrier's claim system. Information flows in both directions — settlement offers, deposition scheduling, medical liens, demand letters. Most of that flow today is email and PDF attachments.

Carrier-portal integrations route the same information through the attorney's tortlconnect workspace. The attorney sees a unified case timeline that combines consumer-side documentation, records intake, carrier correspondence, and outcome reporting. The consumer sees only what their attorney chooses to share with them. The platform is the substrate, not the actor.

For completeness

What we will not build.

A roadmap is also a list of refusals. tortlconnect is not building a paid-placement tier — there is no ranking to pay into and no position to buy. We are not building a lead-broker model. We are not building an AI chatbot that pretends to be a lawyer. We are not building a model that surfaces attorneys outside their licensed jurisdictions. We will not build features that streamline the unauthorized practice of law.

Beyond product refusals there is a posture. The legal profession self-regulates for reasons we take seriously. Bar associations write advertising, solicitation, fee-splitting, conflict, and attorney-client formation rules because the consequences of getting those wrong fall on the attorney first and the consumer second — and the rules are different in every state. Florida's thirty-day cooling-off window after a crash is structurally different from Texas's pre-filing solicitation rule, which is different from New York's referral-fee restrictions, which are different from Michigan's post-2020 PIP-related advertising nuances. tortlconnect does not assume any one of these stands in for the others.

In practice that means paid listings in each state are gated behind a written ethics opinion from counsel in that state before they go live. Consumer-initiated contact is the only contact tortlconnect facilitates inside statutory cooling-off windows. Referral-fee arrangements are not built into the platform — attorney-to-attorney handoffs route through the published co-counsel framework, sized to each state's referral rule. Advertising language an attorney would not be permitted to use in their own jurisdiction is not language tortlconnect will use on their behalf. Bar standing is checked at onboarding and is the attorney's affirmative representation, not ours to grant.

Bar rules are inconvenient for product velocity. We accept the inconvenience.

The thesis of the project is simple: build the product to fit the profession's rules, publish how it fits, and let the structure speak for itself. tortlconnect is a flat-fee directory. Every attorney pays the same $149 a month regardless of case volume, value, or outcome. Founding attorneys can read the state-by-state ethics opinions we have on file before they sign the engagement letter with us. The opinions keep arriving. Some states will open later than others. The cost of being deliberate is the cost we charge ourselves for taking the profession's rules at the weight the profession gives them.