Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing networks attract much attention from legal and research communities. The success and popularity of P2P networks provides a new paradigm for sharing and distributing information. However, the widespread illegal distribution of the copyright protected works and anonymous malicious attacks to the network raise serious concerns for the future of P2P applications. Legal and research professionals face a challenge to collaboratively develop a P2P application that reduces these concerns. Our research aims to develop a P2P collaborative research network, named vuCRN, for legal academics and researchers to facilitate document sharing. In this paper, we present our vuCRN prototype based on JXTA technology. JXTA provides services to let peers find each other in the group, and exchange messages across firewalls and NATs (Network Address Translators). vuCRN allows, peers to freely download shared files but their upload permission is controlled by decentralized user authentication, using local LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) servers. This ensures that peers in vuCRN network obtain only reliable information and protects the quality of resources. This prototype is fully tested in LAN (Local Area Network), Internet and inter-university networks. The testing results, conclusions and future work are also presented in this paper.