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LegalBook

Retention, legal holds and exports

Retention schedules approved by an attorney, legal holds that always win, client-file exports, and deletion requests decided by compliance.

For: Owner

On this page

Retention, legal holds, deletion requests and file exports live under Compliance in the Firm workspace: Compliance overview, Retention, Legal holds, Deletion requests, File exports, Elevated access, Data classification and Support.

Retention

A retention policy sets how long a class of record is kept after a matter closes, and what happens then (archive or anonymize). LegalBook knows 32 classes of record.

  • Retention is off by default. Until a policy is approved, nothing is ever deleted automatically.
  • A policy is drafted, dry-run (which writes nothing and shows what would happen), submitted and approved by an attorney-class role. The author cannot approve their own policy by default.
  • Some records are never disposed of: attorney decisions, filings and other permanent legal records are kept, and billing records are export-only.
  • Retention runs work object by object and record every outcome. A run that is cut short does not mark clocks as complete.
  • Exceptions keep specific records past their policy, for example while a complaint is open.

Onboarding step 25 asks an attorney to confirm the firm's retention policy.

A legal hold preserves records connected to a matter, a person or the whole firm.

  • A legal hold always wins over retention. Held records are never disposed of, archived or anonymized, and new records that fall under a hold are covered as they arrive.
  • Holds can be placed by firm owners, firm administrators, attorneys and supervising attorneys.
  • Releasing a hold needs a recent sign-in and typing the hold's title. A record still covered by another hold stays held.
  • If LegalBook cannot tell whether a record is held, it treats it as held.

File exports

File exports produce a legal file: a client file, a person file, a full firm export or an access report (who accessed a subject).

  1. Request the export and choose what to include.
  2. An approver approves it. By default exports need approval, the approver must be one of the firm's approver roles, and approving needs a recent sign-in.
  3. LegalBook builds the export in parts. Each part and the whole manifest are fingerprinted and the manifest is signed, so tampering can be detected. Values are masked according to the firm's data classification, and PDFs can be watermarked.
  4. Download the parts within the download limit, with a recent sign-in.

A record that does not match its stored fingerprint is left out and flagged, never shipped silently.

Deletion requests

When a person asks the firm to delete their data, staff log a deletion request.

  • LegalBook takes an inventory of what the firm holds about the person.
  • Only compliance decides the outcome, by a firm owner, attorney or supervising attorney. Records under a legal hold, permanent legal records and records the firm must keep are excluded, with the reason.
  • Applying the decision needs a recent sign-in, and LegalBook produces a response in English or Spanish.
  • A closed request cannot be reopened by a late event.