Who can see what in your firm

Within a firm, what someone can see and do comes from three things: their user type, the roles they hold, and which matters they have access to. This page explains all three, plus the ways a single matter can be kept private.

User type: who has legal authority

Every person has one user type — Attorney, Paralegal, or Staff:

Attorney — can take the steps that carry legal authority: approving and sending drafts, approving filings, and reviewing the AI’s work.
Paralegal and Staff — do the gathering and preparing work, but those approving steps stay with an attorney.

A non-attorney can still send email — it goes out on behalf of the matter’s lead attorney, so the attorney of record stays clear.

Roles: what someone can operate

Separately from user type, each person holds one or more roles that set their day-to-day permissions. Someone’s permissions are the sum of their roles:

Administrator — manages the firm: settings, team members, email rules.
General access — standard case work: matters, contacts, drafting, sending.
Billing — can see and approve financial information.

User type and roles are independent — changing one never changes the other. An administrator sets both on the Settings → Team Members page. So someone can be a paralegal who handles billing, or an attorney without administrator access.

Financial information — matter rates and totals, time entries, and billing summaries — is shown only to people whose roles include billing or administrator. For everyone else the matter’s Time tab and the billing roll-ups simply don’t appear; they can still do the case work without seeing the money.

Matter access: all matters, or selected

Each person’s matter access is set per person, on Settings → Team Members:

All matters — sees every matter in the firm.
Selected matters — sees only the matters they’re assigned to. Pick those matters from the searchable list in the person’s Manage panel, or add them from a matter’s own Manage People panel.

This replaces the old firm-wide open/restricted switch — access is now decided person by person, so you can give one paralegal the whole caseload and limit another to a handful of matters.

Keeping a matter private

Two further controls wall off individual matters, even from colleagues who otherwise see all matters:

Confidential matters — mark a matter confidential and it becomes visible only to the people on its team (and the firm owner). Set this from the matter’s Manage People panel.
Conflict screens (ethical walls) — an administrator can block a specific person from a specific matter. A blocked person can’t see the matter at all — it is as if it does not exist for them — which is how you build an ethical wall around a conflicted attorney or staffer.

The firm owner always sees every matter and can never be blocked.

Private Ask Cedent conversations

Separately from matter access, a single Ask Cedent conversation can be marked private. This is stricter than any matter control: a private conversation is visible only to the person who made it — not to teammates on the matter, not to administrators, and not even to the firm owner. Everyone else keeps their normal access to the matter itself; only that one conversation is hidden. Its owner can switch it back to shared at any time.

Deactivating someone

When a person leaves, an administrator can deactivate them on Settings → Team Members. They lose access immediately — sign-in, briefs, alerts, everything — while their past work and history stay intact. You can reactivate them later. The firm owner and the firm’s last administrator can’t be deactivated.

Across firms

None of this crosses firm boundaries. A person in one firm can never see another firm’s matters, whatever their role or team. See How your data is handled.

Common questions

Can a paralegal send an email or file a document? A paralegal or staffer can prepare and send email — it goes out on behalf of the matter’s lead attorney — but approving a filing, or approving billing, is reserved for an attorney.

How do I keep a matter visible to only some of my team? Mark the matter confidential so it’s limited to its team, or set the people who shouldn’t see it to Selected matters and don’t add them. For a hard wall around one specific person, an administrator can place a conflict screen on that matter.

Who can see our billing numbers? Only people whose roles include billing or administrator.