How LegalBook sets up your firm

A firm is not created by signing up. LegalBook's platform administrators create each firm, and the firm's lawyer becomes its owner. This page explains what happens at creation, what the onboarding checklist covers, and which settings wait for an attorney.

Who creates the firm

Only a LegalBook platform administrator can create a firm, from Platform → Firms → Create firm. Owning an organization in the LegalBook account service does not let anyone create a firm on their own.

The administrator enters:

• the firm's display name and, optionally, its legal name,
• the coverage package (Front office, Case operations or Full office),
• the default time zone and language,
• the owner's email address and name,
• one or more offices, each with a name, time zone and optional address and phone number. The first office is the primary one.

A firm with several locations is one firm. Each location is an office, not a separate firm. See Offices for each location.

What happens when the firm is created

1. The sign-in organization. LegalBook creates an organization in the LegalBook account service for the owner. The owner owns it. The platform administrator who created it is not a member and gets no role in the firm.
2. The firm. The organization's owners become Firm owner and its admins become Firm administrator in LegalBook. The named owner is a Firm owner even before their first sign-in.
3. The offices are created, with the first as primary.
4. The invitation. The owner receives one invitation email. If the owner has no LegalBook account yet, they create one when they accept, and take ownership at that point.

If anything fails part way, the administrator repeats the same request and LegalBook finishes what is missing. It never creates a second firm for the same request. If the invitation email fails, the firm still exists and the invitation can be sent again.

The onboarding checklist

A new firm starts in onboarding status. The owner and firm administrators work through Onboarding (in the Firm workspace sidebar), a checklist of 33 steps. Each step says what it is for, links to the screen where it is done, and can be started, completed or skipped with a reason.

The steps, in order:

1. Create tenant and legal entity
2. Configure brands and offices
3. Configure practice areas and accepted matter types
4. Configure business hours, holidays, closure rules and after-hours behaviour
5. Import users and attorneys
6. Configure attorney licences and jurisdictions
7. Configure languages
8. Configure service catalog and intake eligibility rules
9. Configure consultation types, fees, durations, locations, calendars and eligibility
10. Configure conflict-screening fields and policies
11. Configure communication channels and consent wording
12. Configure telephony numbers and forwarding/SIP/porting
13. Configure email domains and shared inboxes
14. Configure practice-management integration
15. Configure document storage integration or native storage
16. Configure e-signature
17. Configure payments
18. Configure workflow packs
19. Configure firm-specific policy overlays
20. Configure attorney approval gates
21. Configure SLA targets
22. Configure escalation tree
23. Configure worker access policy
24. Configure QA sampling level
25. Configure retention and legal-hold policy
26. Configure branding and client portal
27. Run test cases in sandbox mode
28. Validate data mappings
29. Validate routing
30. Validate call transfer and caller-ID behaviour
31. Validate integration error recovery
32. Obtain firm sign-off
33. Activate production

Some steps are optional (shared email inboxes, practice-management integration, e-signature, payments, client portal branding and the integration checks). The rest are required before the firm can go live.

Steps an attorney must confirm

Several steps are marked as needing an attorney's sign-off: attorney licences and jurisdictions, conflict policy, consent wording, policy overlays, attorney approval gates, retention, firm sign-off and activation. A firm owner, attorney or supervising attorney completes them, with a recorded reason.

Sandbox tests

Step 27 asks you to place a test call, run a simulated intake and a simulated document request, and watch what reception and production would see. Sandbox data is tagged and kept out of reports.

Sign-off and activation

At step 32 the firm owner or a supervising attorney signs off the playbooks, intake forms, workflow packs, policy overlays and routing. Each item is signed at its version: a later version needs a new signature.

Step 33, Activate production, switches the firm from onboarding to active. It is allowed only when every required step is complete or skipped and the sign-off is current. Once active, numbers start routing to the workforce, the portal opens to invited clients and service-level clocks start.

Settings that need an attorney

Any rule that is a legal or ethical decision is a firm setting marked requires licensed-attorney/operations configuration. Until someone with the authority sets it, it stays in its safe default, which is always the do-nothing or escalate-to-a-person option. Examples:

• call recording is off,
• no consent or disclosure wording is read until an attorney approves it,
• deadlines are never rolled for weekends or holidays automatically; an attorney verifies them,
• conflicts are cleared by an attorney,
• retention deletes nothing automatically.

The full picture is on Firm settings.

Inviting your team

Owners and firm administrators grant roles from Users & roles, using each person's sign-in email. Attorneys need the Attorney or Supervising attorney role before matters can be assigned to them. Nobody shares a login. See Users and roles.