Legal stores all documents in secure cloud storage and organizes them through matters, clients, and compliance document records. Access follows your organization's user roles, and the audit log records the actions taken on a document — its creation, its PDF render, its signature events, its download-URL requests, its updates, and its soft delete.
Where Documents Live
Documents in Legal are stored in Azure Blob Storage and referenced from matter document records. There is no separate file cabinet — documents are always attached to a matter, which ties them to a client and a matter type. This gives you natural organization without manual folder management.
Finding Documents
Search by Matter
- Go to Legal > Matters.
- Search or filter by title, client, status, matter type, or assigned attorney.
- Open the matter and go to the Documents tab to see all files attached to it.
Search by Client
- Go to Legal > Clients and open a client record.
- The client's Agreements view shows all documents tied to that client that are signed or in review.
Compliance Documents
Compliance documents (MSAs, BAAs, SOC reports, and similar) have their own dedicated area:
- Go to Legal > Compliance Docs.
- Filter by client, document type, or expiry status.
- The Expiring tab shows everything due within 30 days. The Gaps tab shows clients who are missing a required document type.
Downloading a Document
- Open the matter containing the document.
- Go to the Documents tab and find the file.
- Click Download. Legal generates a secure, time-limited download URL from storage.
Uploading Large Files
For files too large to upload through the browser:
- On the matter's Documents tab, click Get Upload URL.
- Legal returns a pre-signed URL that you can use to upload the file directly to storage.
- Once uploaded, the document record appears in the matter.
Access Control
Access to documents is governed by your organization's user roles:
- Owner / Admin — full read and write access to all matters and documents
- Standard users — can create and edit matters and documents within their scope
- Viewer — read-only; cannot create, edit, upload, or delete anything
The client portal gives your clients a read-only view of agreements that are signed or in review on matters linked to their company. Clients cannot edit or download full documents from the portal — they see the agreements view only.
Document Retention
Legal retains documents indefinitely. Document deletes are soft — the document record is flagged as deleted and kept, and the stored file is not removed. A stored retention setting of 365 days exists for certain system records, but nothing is automatically purged — document blobs and records remain accessible beyond that for compliance purposes. The retention rules under Legal > Settings are a recorded intent: no scheduled job reads them, so saving a rule does not archive or delete anything and it must not be relied on to meet a retention obligation.
FAQ
Can I organize documents into folders? Documents are organized through matters and clients rather than manual folders. Use matter types, tags on matters, and the compliance documents area to segment documents by purpose. Searching by client, status, or matter type gives you the same result as folders without the overhead of maintaining a folder hierarchy.
Who can see my organization's documents? Only users within your organization can access your documents. Platform templates are visible to all tenants, but matter documents, contracts, and compliance docs are strictly scoped to your org and never shared across tenants.
How do I know if a document was accessed? Requesting a document download URL mints a short-lived link and writes an audit entry naming the document, the matter it belongs to and the user who requested it, so a document download is recorded. What the audit log records on a document is the action taken on it — its creation, its PDF render, its signature events, its download-URL requests, its updates, and its soft delete. See Compliance and Audit Trail for how to read the audit log.