Legal maintains an audit log of significant actions across matters, documents, contracts, and settings. The service only ever adds entries — there is no code path that edits or deletes an audit row — and each entry is also handed to the platform's shared off-box audit archive. This record supports defensibility, compliance audits, and internal accountability. Signature events produce additional records tied to the e-signature service.
What the Audit Log Captures
The audit log captures the kinds of actions below:
- Creating and soft-deleting matters, documents, contracts, compliance docs, and policies
- Submitting, beginning review, approving, returning, and archiving matters
- Sending a document for signature and marking it signed
- Uploading documents
- Adding, updating, and resolving document comments
- Creating and modifying deadlines
- Connecting to and disconnecting from attorneys
- Billing actions: adding time entries, generating invoices
- Changes to settings
That list is not exhaustive: an administrator resetting the org's setup-wizard state (Legal > Setup Wizard > Reset), requesting a document download URL, and an ordinary update to a matter or a document each write their own audit entry. The reset entry names the administrator and the org, the download-URL entry names the document and the matter it belongs to, and an update entry names the matter or the document together with the fields the request changed.
Each audit entry records:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Actor | The user or service that performed the action |
| Action | The specific action taken (e.g., matter.approved, document.sent_for_signature) |
| Entity type | The type of record affected (matter, document, contract, etc.) |
| Entity ID | The specific record affected |
| Details | A JSON blob with relevant context |
| Timestamp | When the action occurred |
Viewing the Audit Log
- Go to Legal > Audit Log.
- Entries are displayed in reverse chronological order.
- Filter by actor, entity type, or date range to narrow results.
Audit log access is restricted to administrators and owners.
Record Retention and Recovery
Audit log writes are not fire-and-forget: where the audit entry is part of the result, the response waits for the local insert before it is returned, and a failed insert is logged rather than surfaced — it never fails the request. The secondary off-box copy sent to the audit archive is fire-and-forget. Deletes in Legal are soft for matters, documents, contracts and policies: the record is flagged is_deleted = 1 and kept. A few rows are removed outright rather than flagged — a document comment with no replies, a customer document override an administrator reverts to the org default, an org's setup-wizard state on reset, and an automation policy an administrator deletes. Because the service only ever adds audit entries and never edits or deletes one, a written entry stays intact.
E-Signature Certificates
When a document is sent for signature and completed, the e-signature service generates a certificate of completion. Legal stores:
-
esign_envelope_id— the envelope reference in the e-signature service -
esign_sent_at— when the document was sent -
esign_signed_at— when the signer completed signing
These fields, combined with the audit log entry for document.sent_for_signature and document.signed, form Legal's record of the signing event. For a full signing certificate (with signer IP, timestamps, and certificate of completion), retrieve the envelope record from the e-signature service using the stored esign_envelope_id.
Compliance Documents and Gap Detection
Beyond the audit trail, Legal has dedicated compliance tracking:
- Go to Legal > Compliance Docs.
- The Gaps tab shows clients who are missing required document types — for example, a client with no BAA on file.
- The Expiring tab shows documents expiring within 30 days.
- Legal automatically creates a deadline for each expiring compliance doc and publishes a renewal event if one is not already present. The renewal alert is emailed through Hub to the document's matter owner — the matter's assigned attorney, or the matter's creator where none is assigned — or to whoever recorded the document when it isn't tied to a matter; it goes out 30 days before expiry and again once the document has expired. A row that resolves to no platform user is not alerted.
This gives you a proactive view of compliance obligations before they lapse, not just a record of what has already happened.
FAQ
Can audit log entries be edited or deleted? No. There is no edit or delete endpoint for audit log records, and the service only ever inserts them.
How long are audit records kept? Audit records are retained along with all other Legal data. Soft-deleted records are kept indefinitely in the database. A stored retention setting of 365 days exists for certain system records, but no scheduled job reads it: audit entries and document records are not automatically purged, and the setting must not be relied on to meet a retention obligation.
Does the audit log capture failed actions? The audit log records completed actions. If an action fails before completion (for example, an upload that errors out), that incomplete action is not logged as a successful event.