Concept
Ethical walls
A wall makes a matter or a client invisible to the people it shuts out, everywhere in the system, until two people agree to lift it.
What a wall does
An ethical wall separates a matter or a client from named people or roles, usually because they act, or have acted, on the other side. For everyone it shuts out, the walled record does not exist: it is missing from lists, counts, search results, the calendar, task lists, notifications, financial totals and reports.
Nobody outside the wall is shown a refusal to explain away. A person who follows an old link sees the same "not found" as for a record that never existed.
Put up a wall
- Open Settings, then Ethical walls, and choose New wall.
- Choose what is walled: a matter or a client.
- Choose who is shut out, by person or by role, and give the reason.
- Save. Each person shut out is told they have been placed on a restricted list, without being told what the list is about.
Lift a wall
Lifting takes two people: one asks, and a second, holding the permission to approve, agrees. Somebody cannot approve the lifting they asked for themselves. Both steps are recorded for good.
Conflict checks behind a wall
The compliance function sees conflict results in full, whatever walls stand. A fee earner who is walled from a matching record sees the result redacted, so a check never leaks what a wall protects.
Was this helpful?
Read next
- Roles, permissions and scopesWhat a person may do is decided by the permissions their roles grant, each at a scope, never by the name of their role.
- Run and decide a conflict checkCheck every proposed party against the whole register before a matter opens, and record the partner's decision for good.
- The audit trailEvery change, and every view of confidential material, is written down with who, what and when, in a record no one can edit.