Who can see a document

This is simpler than most portals, and the simplicity is worth understanding exactly, because it is the whole access model.

There is no public link

A document link is useless to anybody outside your firm. Every time a file is opened the portal checks who is asking and which firm they belong to before sending any of it. A document URL pasted into an email to somebody outside is refused.

There is no “anyone with the link” mode to turn on by accident. That is the reason to use the portal rather than an email attachment.

Inside the firm

Your own people see the firm’s work. An attorney, admin or owner can reach every document belonging to your firm. There is no per-colleague restriction and no “only my clients” mode to set on one person.

Unless the firm has turned ethical walls on. That is the one setting that narrows a colleague, and it does it for everybody at once: with walls on, an attorney reaches only the matters they are staffed on and the documents filed on them. Owners and admins are never walled. It is off by default, and it is a decision for the whole firm rather than for one file or one matter — see Ethical walls.

A client sees two things, and only two: documents assigned to them, and documents they uploaded themselves. Nothing else exists as far as their account is concerned.

That is the entire rule for a client, and walls do not change it: walls are about who inside the practice may see which file, and a client is not inside the practice. A client’s request is narrowed to those two conditions before it reaches the database, so another client’s documents are not hidden from the screen — they are never fetched.

So: to give a client a document, assign it

Assignment is not an organisational nicety in this product. It is the mechanism. A document nobody has assigned to a client is a document that client cannot see, however it is filed.

Set the assignment while uploading, or afterwards from the document’s row in Documents. See Document assignments.

What folders do not do

Folders organise the firm’s own filing. They do not grant a client access to anything, and clients cannot reach the Folders screen at all — it is not in their sidebar.

Putting a client’s papers in a folder named after them is good practice for your staff and invisible to the client. See Organizing with folders.

What a client can do with what they can see

• Read and download it. There is no view-only level; if a client can see a document, they can take a copy.
• Upload their own. Which may need approving first — see Document status and approvals.
• Edit or delete their own uploads, but only if an admin has turned that on. Both are off by default.
• Sign it, when a signature has been requested from them.

Taking access back

Reassign the document to somebody else, and it leaves the client’s account at once.

What that does not do is retrieve a copy they have already downloaded. Plan on the basis that anything a client has been able to open, they may still have.