Business process visualization app

Custom software development for the US-based legaltech startup that helped them raise $875,000 through YCombinator

ABOUT
the project

Client:

On-demand Legal Platform Provider

Location:

USA

New York

Company Size:

3+ Employees

Industry:

Legaltech

Solution:

Web Development

Services:

Custom Software Development

Technologies:

Ruby on Rails

Stripe

Twilio

Plaid

ES6

jQuery

SaаS

Heroku

Airbrake

The customer’s platform offers a service that connects people with attorneys for legal consultations over the internet. It provides virtual paralegal services to law firms, offering a low-cost alternative to hiring in-house full-time staff. The service includes features like inbound and outbound call handling, customizable scripts, 24/7 availability, and legal terminology recognition.

Integrating Plaid was a good go-to-market decision for the platform. It allowed us to securely enable ACH payments and bank account linking without ever exposing sensitive financial data. We focused on making the process frictionless for users while maintaining strict compliance and encryption standards behind the scenes.

Oleksandr Orlov

Lead Ruby Software Engineer

Customer

A tech start-up aiming to facilitate the process of hiring attorneys. The founder made the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list as a successful lawyer. He took the platform through Y Combinator as a solo, non-technical founder and raised a seed round of $875,000.

Business Challenge

The challenge was to translate a vision into a reliable, feature-rich application that could handle legal case workflows, real-time attorney-client communication, secure document sharing, and online payments.

Given the small team and lack of internal engineering resources, the client required a dedicated tech partner capable of owning full-cycle web development and helping to deliver a minimum viable product to market quickly. Then, scale it to support thousands of users across the United States.

Why Leobit

The customer found Leobit on one of the B2B service provider listings and was impressed by our reviews and testimonials. The deciding factor was our proven expertise in web development, especially with Ruby on Rails applications and integrations of complex third-party APIs like Twilio and Stripe.

Project
in detail

Leobit played a crucial role in transforming the client’s early-stage idea into a scalable legaltech platform that now serves over 20,000 users across the U.S. Our engineering team was responsible for end-to-end web development.

Twilio integration

To support immediate client-attorney interactions, Leobit integrated Twilio, a cloud communication platform that enables both inbound and outbound voice calls directly from the web application. This allowed users to request consultations and receive calls through the browser or phone and record conversations for legal review (if permitted). Our engineers built a backend workflow that routes calls based on user input and availability.

Document sharing and case collaboration

To facilitate legal workflows, Leobit developed a secure document upload and management feature that allows clients to upload case-relevant files for attorney review and attorneys to share legal documents, forms, or contracts. We used encrypted data transmission and storage mechanisms to ensure client confidentiality.

Monitoring and performance optimization

Leobit integrated Airbrake for real-time error monitoring. This allowed the development team to continuously monitor application performance and server uptime and detect and resolve issues before they impact users. Our developers also performed codebase optimization and database indexing to handle increased user load as the platform scaled.

Intuitive and responsive user interface

We used HAML, Sass, and ES6 with jQuery for enhanced interactivity to develop the front end of the platform. This stack allowed for fast UI development with cleaner syntax. It also provides a responsive layout across browsers and devices with an ability for real-time updates and smooth transitions between user actions.

Secure online payments and billing

Our team used Stripe API to develop a custom payment interface that allows users to initiate payments, manage billing preferences, and receive automated invoices within the platform. The solution supports multiple billing models, including hourly rates for legal consultations, fixed-fee services, and recurring subscriptions for law firms or frequent users.

Stripe’s secure tokenization process ensures that sensitive payment details, such as credit card information, are never stored on the platform’s servers. Instead, payment data is securely transmitted and handled by Stripe, aligning with PCI-DSS compliance standards. The platform also utilizes webhooks to listen for payment events (e.g., successful charges, refunds, and failed payments), which enables real-time updates to user dashboards and transaction logs.

To further enhance financial integrity and user trust, we integrated Plaid, a financial services API that securely connects to users’ bank accounts. This allows for ACH payments, identity verification, and balance checks without exposing raw banking credentials. The integration ensures a frictionless experience for users linking their financial institutions while providing legal professionals with reliable payment channels and a reduced risk of fraud or chargebacks.

Technology Solution

Plaid API integration for secure ACH payments and bank account linking
The use of encrypted data transmission and storage mechanisms to ensure client confidentiality
Monitoring and error tracking were handled through Airbrake
Stripe webhooks to track payment events and synchronize billing statuses in real time across the system