CEL Solicitors is a UK consumer law firm that handles fraud and scam recovery cases on a no-win, no-fee basis. Once a client signs up, they need to submit evidence through a web portal: bank statements, chat transcripts, scam correspondence, photo ID. A case can’t move forward until this evidence is in, so a confusing upload step doesn’t just frustrate someone, it holds up their claim.
CEL SOLICITORS
Getting evidence to the right place without the wrong friction
Fraud victims were struggling to upload evidence for their cases. I redesigned CEL's client evidence portal to reduce confusion, build trust, and get files to the legal team without generating support calls.
Role: Lead product designer
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Scope: User flow, UX and UI, mobile-first web
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Timeline: ~2 weeks of design work
Where this sits
The existing portal was a single-page form. Enter your case reference and postcode, drag files into an upload area, pick a category from a dropdown, hit submit. It technically worked, but clients kept struggling to upload evidence correctly, and case handlers were the ones hearing about it. That feedback loop, clients reporting friction to the case handlers who then flagged it to me, is where the problem definition came from.
The portal assumed people knew how to create a zip file, could categorise their own documents through a generic dropdown, and would understand jargon like “CEL Number”. None of that was reasonable for the audience.
What was falling apart
I reviewed the existing portal against Nielsen’s heuristics and cross-referenced the findings against the client complaints case handlers had been relaying. Chasing missing or incorrectly uploaded evidence was the single most common reason case handlers had to contact clients, so this wasn’t a marginal usability issue, it was the one blocking cases from progressing. The portal hadn’t been formally reviewed since it was built, so problems had quietly accumulated without anyone seeing the full scope.
Grounding the audit in the actual user, someone dealing with a fraud case, likely anxious, often on mobile, made the failures harder to dismiss. Seven issues mapped directly to usability failures, spanning error handling, categorisation, and trust.
Annotated heuristic audit: seven issues mapped to specific heuristics.
The authentication problems surface immediately. The error banner fires before the user has done anything, overlapping the page heading and undermining confidence before a single field has been touched. The “CEL Number” label offers no format hint or example, so people either guess or call support. All three validation errors appear at once on an empty form, which is disorienting and reads as the portal blaming the user for something they haven’t done yet.
The upload experience has its own problems. The upload area shows no file type or size constraints, so people only discover the limits after a failed attempt. The evidence type dropdown expects clients to map their own documents onto CEL’s internal categories with no guidance. “Add More Evidence” is ambiguous: it isn’t clear whether it adds another file to the same category or starts a new one. And the submit button stays active with nothing attached, leaving the door open to empty submissions.
The rebuilt flow, end to end
Before the individual design decisions, here’s the flow I designed, from first landing through to confirmation.
How I fixed it
The redesign started from the problems, not the interface. Each decision answered something specific that was failing: a support call generated, a file sent to the wrong category, a client left wondering whether their evidence had even arrived. The goal was a portal a fraud victim could use without having to think too hard, on whatever device they happened to have in their hand.
There was a second thing shaping every decision. This user arrives already primed to distrust, they’ve just been scammed, and now a website is asking them to hand over bank statements and ID. For them, confusion and suspicion are the same feeling: every ambiguity reads as a possible trap. So reducing confusion was never only about clicks, it was about lowering the sense of risk at each step.
The design is mobile-first throughout. Most clients aren’t sitting at a desk when they get a request for evidence. They’re at home, often stressed, usually on a phone. Every layout decision, every touch target, every piece of instruction copy was written and tested at mobile viewport widths first, then adapted up.
Separated authentication from upload
he new flow starts with a dedicated sign-in screen: CEL reference number and postcode, with placeholder examples showing the expected format (e.g. FRA123456, M1 1AA). The format examples matter more than they look: they remove the fear of getting it wrong on the very first step, before any trust has been built. The sign-in card is centred and contained, with the CEL logo above it. Trust signals sit just below, visible at the exact moment someone is deciding whether to hand over their details.
Replaced the dropdown with a guided evidence type picker
The portal now asks “What are you uploading?” in a modal with clearly labelled options, each with a plain-language subtitle. An “Other document” option means no one gets stuck. The picker does the categorisation work for the user instead of expecting them to understand CEL’s internal taxonomy.
Card-based upload with clear hierarchy
Each evidence type becomes its own card with its own upload zone. File constraints are shown directly in each upload area. “Add more evidence” and “Upload Evidence” are visually separated: the first sits inside the card container, the second outside and muted until at least one file is attached, which prevents empty submissions.
Upload screen: single form before, card-based grouping after.
The upload landing screen
The landing screen sets expectations before anyone uploads. A short “How to upload” block explains the three steps in plain language, so first-time users aren’t guessing at the pattern. The “Add new evidence” button opens the type picker, and the main “Upload Evidence” button stays disabled until at least one file is attached, so the primary action never pretends to be ready before it is. For an anxious user, that removes a specific fear: the “did I just submit nothing?” moment that sends people straight to the phone.
Redesigned the confirmation screen
This screen carries more trust weight than any other in the flow. A defrauded person needs proof it worked before they’ll believe it did, so the new thank-you page shows the case reference number, a submission timestamp, a summary of what was uploaded by category, and a “What happens next” section with three concrete steps. An explicit “You can safely close this window” line gives people permission to leave without second-guessing whether it worked.
Confirmation screen before and after. The contrast makes the argument.
Designed where it matters most
The whole thing was built at phone scale first. These are the three key screens as a client actually meets them: the upload state with files added, the evidence picker, and the confirmation screen.
My role in this
I was the sole designer on this. I surfaced the problems from client feedback that case handlers were relaying, made the internal case for redesigning the portal, got it approved, and owned the work end to end, from the heuristic review of the old portal through to the final designs now in development.
What I'd refine next
The portal has been tested internally but hasn’t shipped to clients yet, so there’s no post-launch data. A few things I’d push for when it does:
Collapse the instruction block for returning users. The “How to upload” block earns its space on a first visit but eats a lot of vertical room on mobile. For repeat uploaders, a collapsible or dismissible version would cut the friction without throwing the guidance away.
Sharpen the distinction between the two bank statement types. “Bank statements, related to the scam payments” and “Bank statements (last 12 months)” sit close enough to make people hesitate. Labels like “scam transactions only” versus “full 12-month history” would draw the line more clearly.
Track completion rate and time to submit post-launch. The redesign is a hypothesis, built from what clients were reporting through case handlers rather than from analytics. There was no baseline instrumentation on the old portal, so proving it worked will mean watching support query volume and completion data once it’s live.
Where it stands
Redesign complete and tested internally. It’s in development now and ships to clients shortly.
What I’m watching for is simpler than any metric: someone who’s just been scammed getting their evidence in, on their phone, without having to ring anyone to do it. That call was the original symptom, and a case can’t move until the evidence lands. If the redesign holds, the call doesn’t happen and the claim progresses. That’s the bar it has to clear.