Radiant Law

Scaling Operations for a Technology-Led Law Firm

Radiant Law is not a typical law firm. With a 70-strong team, 24-hour global coverage and a commitment to fixed-price, technology-powered contracting, they needed operational tooling that matched the sophistication of their service model. Off-the-shelf legal practice management software could not accommodate the breadth of their workflows, from matter intake and escalation handling to governance meetings, quarterly reporting and real-time conflict checking.

At the same time, Radiant's clients (general counsel and legal operations leaders at some of the world's largest companies) expected transparency into the work being done on their behalf. A separate, secure client portal was required to give these stakeholders self-service access to matters, escalations, playbooks and performance reports without exposing internal operational detail.

The challenge was twofold: build an internal platform flexible enough to orchestrate every facet of Radiant's delivery model, and a client-facing portal that surfaces the right data to the right audience, all backed by a single, reliable API.

A Three-Tier Platform Architecture

Vulcan Labs partnered with Radiant Law to design and develop a purpose-built platform comprising a Ruby on Rails API, an internal operations dashboard and a public client portal, all deployed on Google Cloud.

The API serves as the single source of truth, connecting a PostgreSQL database for core operational data, a read-only MySQL connection to Radiant's legacy Flow system for matter records, and Google BigQuery for analytics, audit logging and performance metrics. Authentication is handled through Firebase for internal users and session-based auth for portal clients, with role-based permissions governing access across both surfaces.

Empowering the Radiant Team

The internal dashboard is a React single-page application built on Vite with TanStack Router, TanStack Query and Zustand for state management. It gives Radiant's team a comprehensive operational console covering every aspect of service delivery:

• Matters & Escalations — Full lifecycle tracking with tabbed detail views, conflict-awareness banners and integration with Radiant's playbook library for guided resolution.
• Kanban Board — Drag-and-drop obstacle management within delivery cycles, giving team leads a visual workflow for tracking blockers and challenges.
• Governance — Meeting scheduling, action tracking and event management to keep client engagements on course.
• Reporting & Analytics — Delivery dashboards, SLA monitoring, competency tracking and a Grid of Glory performance view, all powered by BigQuery and rendered with Chart.js and Recharts.
• Admin & SOPs — Master data management for clients, departments, team members and works, plus BPMN-powered standard operating procedures with a visual process editor.
• Conflict Checking — A dedicated queue for identifying and resolving potential conflicts of interest, with Slack-driven approval workflows.

Transparency for Radiant's Clients

The client portal, branded Radiant Insight, provides Radiant's clients with a clean, self-service window into the work being performed on their behalf. Built with the same modern React stack, it offers:

• Home Dashboard — Key performance metrics at a glance including new matters, average days to finalise and NPS scores.
• Matters — Filterable views of intake, open and closed matters with drill-down detail.
• Escalations — Open and resolved escalation tracking with notes, actions and related documentation.
• Playbooks — Access to the governing playbooks that define how Radiant handles each client's contracts.
• Governance & Reports — Meeting actions and configurable reporting dashboards tailored to each client account.

The platform is deeply integrated with the tools Radiant's team uses daily. Slack receives real-time notifications for escalations, conflict checks and approval workflows. Email notifications are dispatched for portal invitations and operational alerts. Google Cloud Storage handles document attachments, while BigQuery powers the analytics layer that underpins both internal and client-facing reporting.

The entire stack runs on Google Cloud. The API is containerised and deployed to Cloud Run with Cloud SQL for managed PostgreSQL and MySQL connectivity, Cloud Build for CI/CD, and Secret Manager for credential governance. The result is a platform that scales elastically, deploys continuously and maintains the reliability that Radiant's global, round-the-clock operation demands.

• Ruby on Rails
• ReactJS
• TypeScript
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL
• BigQuery
• Google Cloud Run
• Google Cloud SQL
• Firebase
• Slack API
• Vite
• TanStack Router
• Tailwind CSS