Download and export options

Downloading a document

Use the download action on the document’s row in Documents, or the Download button while a document is open in the editor. The file arrives as you uploaded it, except for a PDF you have edited and saved — that one arrives with your changes on the page.

Who can download

Downloading needs download access:

• An attorney or admin can download the firm’s documents.
• A client can download anything assigned to them, and anything they uploaded themselves.

There is no view-only level. If a client can open a document, they can take a copy of it — so the decision that matters is whether to assign it, not how. See Who can see a document.

Downloading from the editor

Download in the editor gives you the current state of the page, including anything you have just placed but not yet saved. It does not change what the portal holds — use Save for that.

What is recorded

Every download, with who and when — including a client’s. “Did they ever actually collect it?” is a question the matter’s Activity panel answers, and so does Settings → Activity across the firm.

Opens are recorded too, but collapsed to once a day per person per file; downloads are not collapsed, because “again” is the interesting part of a download. What none of it is is attested — see What is recorded about a document for the whole of it, and for what you should not claim about it.

Taking the whole firm at once

Settings → Your data → Prepare an export. Owners and admins only, because the archive is the whole firm — including matters an attorney is not on.

It is built after you ask rather than while you wait: zipping a few thousand files takes minutes, so you can leave the page and the person who asked is emailed a link when it is ready. One at a time; asking again while one is building is refused rather than doubled.

What arrives is a zip holding:

• documents/ — every file, in folders by matter and folder name, in the format it went in as.
• matters.csv and documents.csv — what everything is, which matter it is on, who uploaded it and when.
• README.txt — the count, so you can tell whether the zip is the whole library.

The link expires after seven days and so does the archive; ask for a fresh one and it is rebuilt. Asking for one and downloading it are both themselves recorded.

What there still is not

No scheduled or automatic export — somebody presses the button. Nothing exports the activity log, your templates or your message threads: the archive carries documents and the lists that describe them. And there is no import on the other side, so a firm arriving from another system uploads its files rather than handing us an archive.