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IND-04 · Legal and professional services

Matter document management that holds the whole file, including the email

In legal and professional practice, the file is the work product. EDMS by Sibasi builds matter-centric files that hold every draft, executed document, attendance note and email thread in one place, with access confined to the team on the matter and a retention position you can defend years later.

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REF / RECORDS

What you hold

The file plan is built around these. Each record class gets its own metadata, permissions and retention position.

  • Matter and case files
  • Contracts, deeds and executed instruments
  • Pleadings, filings and court correspondence
  • Client correspondence and email threads
  • Attendance notes and advice memoranda
  • Engagement letters and conflict checks
  • Due diligence bundles and data room content
  • Working papers and audit files

REF / OBLIGATIONS

What you are judged against

These are the rules the deployment is configured to satisfy — mapped onto retention schedules, access models and audit reporting during design, not asserted afterwards.

Compliance

Professional privilege and confidentiality

Privileged material must be identifiable and access-restricted, and inadvertent disclosure must be preventable rather than merely regrettable.

Compliance

Conflict management

Information barriers between matters must be enforceable at the system level, not by convention.

Compliance

File retention obligations

Client files carry long retention periods after closure, and returning or destroying them requires evidence of what was held.

Compliance

Data Protection Act, 2019

Client and third-party personal data in matter files falls under the Act like any other processing.

Compliance is a property of your organisation rather than of software. What the platform provides is the technical control and the evidence — see security and compliance for how each control is implemented.

REF / BEFORE

What tends to be true today

  • Email is the real file

    The decisive exchange sits in one fee earner mailbox and is invisible to everyone else on the matter.

  • Which draft was executed

    Six versions with names like final_v3_REVISED and no reliable way to identify the one that was signed.

  • Handover loses continuity

    A fee earner leaves and the matter history leaves with them, because it was never in a shared file.

  • Closed files nobody can account for

    Retention decisions deferred indefinitely because nobody knows what a closed matter actually contains.

REF / AFTER

What the deployment changes

  • Email filed to the matter, from Outlook

    One click files a thread and its attachments to the matter file with sender, date and thread preserved as metadata.

  • Unambiguous execution history

    Version control plus signature workflow means the executed instrument is identified as such, with the trail behind it.

  • Access that follows the matter team

    Permissions granted by matter, with information barriers enforced by the platform and every access logged.

  • Closure with a defensible position

    Closed matters carry a retention label, and disposal is a reviewed, evidenced act rather than an omission.

REF / RELATED

Other sectors

IND-01

Public sector

EDMS for registries that still run on a file movement book
IND-02

Financial services

EDMS for banks and SACCOs: files that are complete when the regulator asks
IND-03

Healthcare

Controlled clinical documents, and privacy that holds: EDMS for health institutions

REF / NEXT STEP

See EDMS by Sibasi configured for legal

Bring one of your own record types and one process that currently takes too long. We will show you both running in under an hour.

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