Your first thirty days on tortlconnect.

I

Phase one · Days 1–2

Onboarding.

Onboarding is roughly ten minutes of typing and one to two business days of verification on our side. The two clocks do not overlap. You finish the form; we take it from there.

What we need from you.

Bar number and the state it was issued in. The practice areas you actually take — not a comprehensive list of every case type you have ever touched, but the ones you want a consumer to be able to find you under. The location you serve. Languages spoken in your practice. Whether you are currently accepting new clients. These are the facts a consumer will filter your listing on, so declare the ones that are true today.

Every one of these is a filterable fact, not a rating. A consumer who filters for a Spanish-speaking auto-injury attorney in your county either sees you or does not, based on what you declared — nothing is weighted, nothing is scored. The form is the form because the filters can only work on facts you have given us.

What we verify.

Bar standing against the state bar of record, plus a disciplinary check. Identity, against the bar registration. Practice-area, location, and availability declarations are shown as attorney-attested in your listing, in the open, so a consumer always knows which facts we checked against bar data and which you told us yourself.

How long it takes.

One to two business days, typically. The slow step is bar verification, which we batch in the morning and again mid-afternoon. You can finish the form on a Friday night and have a live listing by Tuesday.

II

Phase two · Days 2–3

Your listing goes live.

Once verification clears, your listing enters the directory for your state. From that moment, any consumer in your state who is looking for an attorney can see you — shown in a random order that rotates daily, identically to every other verified attorney who cleared the same public bar.

There is no queue and no placement to earn. tortl does not order attorneys by quality, price, or anything an attorney can pay for. Your listing appears or it does not, based on the facts you declared: if a consumer filters for your case type, your location, your language, or an attorney accepting clients, and your listing matches those facts, you are in the set they see.

Everything a consumer can narrow you by is a neutral, verifiable fact. tortl exposes the filters and never decides which one matters — narrowing is the consumer choosing, never tortl choosing for them.

Going live is not a marketing event. It is the moment your declared facts become filterable — and the last moment tortl touches how you are seen.

III

Phase three · Days 3–7

What a consumer sees.

Your listing renders exactly like every other verified attorney's: firm, location, and a short set of facts, each labeled by source. There is no headline number, no placement badge, no "recommended" tag. The absence is the point — a consumer cannot tell, and is never told, that anyone paid for anything, because nobody did.

How the consumer narrows the list.

A consumer opens the directory to every verified attorney in their state and narrows it themselves — by neutral, verifiable facts like case type, location, language, and whether the attorney is taking clients. Your listing stays in their set as long as it matches the facts you declared. tortl never reorders that set to favor one attorney over another.

When nothing matches.

If a consumer's filters leave nothing, tortl says so and names the filter doing the work — "no Mandarin-speaking attorneys within five miles; three within twenty-five" — then lets the consumer relax it. We never quietly drop a criterion to fill the screen with attorneys who do not actually match. Empty means empty until the consumer decides otherwise.

IV

Phase four · Days 5–14

First inquiries arrive.

Being listed puts you in front of consumers. An inquiry is a consumer acting on it. An inquiry happens when a consumer reads your listing, sees which facts are verified and which are attested, and chooses to send you their case file with a short message. The choice is entirely theirs — tortl put no thumb on the scale to get you there.

What they see.

The consumer sees your name, firm, jurisdiction, declared practice areas, location, languages, availability, and a short bio — the same verified-or-attested facts on your listing, each labeled by source. There is no score and no placement to interpret, on their side of the screen or yours. They chose you from a set they narrowed themselves.

What you see.

The case file: jurisdiction, case type, intake answers, and the consumer's message. The case file is shared with you only when the consumer initiates contact. tortl does not read it to rank you and does not transmit it before the consumer decides to reach out.

Why response time still matters.

Nothing about your response time changes where you appear — order is random and rotates daily for everyone. But a consumer who sends you a case file is waiting on a human being, and a 72-hour reply on a case where the statute expires in two weeks is the kind of thing that loses a client you were already shown to. Availability is a fact you declare; honoring it is on you.

Response time is the one thing that costs nothing to declare and everything to honor. The directory shows you either way — the client remembers which.

V

Phase five · Day 15 and beyond

Steady state.

After the first two weeks the cadence settles. Consumers search your state continuously; your listing appears in whatever set matches the facts you declared, in a random order that rotates daily; inquiries arrive when consumers choose to send them. None of it depends on who is logged in.

Why the order is random.

Every verified attorney in a consumer's filtered set is shown identically, in an order that is randomized and rotates daily. That is deliberate: any fixed order would be a ranking, and any ranking is a thing someone would eventually try to buy. Random-and-rotating means there is no top of the list to win — so there is nothing to sell, and no attorney can pay to be seen first.

Your listing, your facts.

Steady state is mostly you keeping your listing honest. If you stop taking a case type, drop it. If you stop accepting clients, say so. Because consumers filter on these facts directly, a stale declaration does not cost you a placement — it puts you in front of consumers you cannot actually help, which helps no one.

How to pause.

Pause is a single toggle in your dashboard. It removes your listing from the directory and halts billing — the $149 base does not bill while your listing is paused — without canceling your listing or forfeiting your founding rate. Use it when you hit your own caseload limit, when you are out on trial, or when you simply need a quiet week. Unpause when you want to be listed again, and the $149 resumes on your next billing date.

What changes after day 30

Three quiet shifts.

The first thirty days are the soft-start window. After day thirty, three things change — none of them dramatic, all of them documented.

Your declared facts get a freshness nudge.

After day thirty, your dashboard begins prompting you to confirm your listing is still accurate — practice areas, location, availability — on a light recurring cadence. Nothing changes automatically; you are simply reminded to keep the facts consumers filter on current.

Consumer feedback appears on your listing.

New listings carry no reviews. After day thirty, completed-consult feedback begins appearing as its own attested facts on your listing. It never becomes a score and never reorders you — the directory order stays random and daily-rotated — it is one more thing a consumer can read and weigh for themselves.

You have real usage data to tune your declarations.

By day thirty you can see which of your declared facts consumers actually filter on in your market. That is information, not a lever — you cannot pay to appear more, but you can decide whether the case types and languages you declared reflect the practice you actually want.

None of these shifts requires anything from you on the day they happen. They are described here so the curve is not a surprise.