A US legal services platform delivering case status notifications, court date reminders, and document completion notices was seeing 28% rejection or spam placement at Proofpoint and Mimecast-protected inboxes. Failed delivery of court date notifications created potential malpractice exposure. The platform had received two formal complaints from corporate clients whose legal teams missed filing deadlines due to email non-delivery.
The platform's sending infrastructure had never been optimized for corporate email gateway delivery. Proofpoint and Mimecast apply significantly stricter filtering than consumer ISPs, requiring specific reputation thresholds, clean URL reputation, and often whitelist registration. The sending IPs had no PTR records and DKIM was using a 1024-bit key — below corporate gateway requirements.
SolutionWe redesigned the infrastructure specifically for corporate inbox delivery: dedicated IPs with legal-appropriate PTR hostnames, 2048-bit DKIM keys, DMARC p=reject, and registration with Proofpoint and Mimecast's trusted sender programs. Legal document notifications were separated onto their own IP with a sending pattern consistent with professional services communication.
Results"When you are in legal services, an email that doesn't arrive is not a marketing miss — it is a potential malpractice claim. We needed infrastructure built to the standards that corporate legal departments require."
— CEO, Legal Services PlatformLegal and professional services email is disproportionately delivered to corporate email gateways. Infrastructure built for consumer inbox placement often fails at corporate gateways — dedicated infrastructure with gateway-specific optimization and trusted sender registration is required.
