AskLawyer.vn — Bilingual LegalTech Platform
How we co-engineered AskLawyer.vn, an English-default bilingual legal services platform providing structured assessment workflows, eligibility verification, and lawyer casework management for foreign nationals and foreign investors navigating Vietnam.
The Opaque Legal Landscape
Foreign investors, expats, and international businesses operating in Vietnam frequently struggle with complex, rapidly changing regulatory requirements. Traditional legal consultations often suffer from upfront ambiguity, unstandardized intake processes, and language barriers across specialized domains like foreign direct investment (FDI), residency visas, real estate ownership, and cross-border profit remittance.
Generic AI chat solutions fail in legal contexts due to hallucination risks and lack of formal attorney oversight. AskLawyer required a structured mechanism to capture non-sensitive case parameters, determine legal eligibility, and hand off scoped cases directly to qualified Vietnamese attorneys.
Structured Workflows & Lawyer Casework
We built a specialized intake and casework engine. Instead of open-ended chat prompts, clients navigate domain-specific diagnostic pathways (Visa & Residency, FDI Corporate Setup, Property Title Audit, Capital Remittance, and Commercial Disputes).
The platform captures high-level context, evaluates statutory criteria, and generates a structured case brief for lawyer review. Lawyers use a dedicated operational dashboard to review submissions, issue binding fee proposals, manage authenticated document exchanges, and track client case milestones.
Key Platform Highlights
Engineering & Security Architecture
Compilation-Free Frontend Stack
Built with native HTML5 templates, Bulma CSS, and Alpine AJAX. Runs completely browser-native without complex Javascript compilation steps, ensuring ultra-fast page loads and effortless edge deployment on minimal hardware.
AES-256 Encrypted Environment Vaulting
Ensured zero plaintext environment secrets in codebase repositories. Secret vaulting utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption with PBKDF2 key derivation, enabling secure local development and automated self-hosted Gitea runner deployments.
Playwright & Lightpanda Verification
Continuous Integration leverages Playwright with Lightpanda headless execution, automating end-to-end assessment flow verification and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance across all mobile and desktop viewports.