Roles, permissions and scopes

Permissions, not job titles

Every action in the system asks for a permission: recording time asks for one, approving a document for another, posting a journal for a third. The system never asks whether someone is a partner. It asks whether they hold the permission, which means the firm, not the software, decides what each person may do.

A role is a named set of permissions. The firm starts with eleven, from managing partner down to receptionist, and changes them as it sees fit. A person can hold more than one role, and what they may do is everything their roles grant together.

Scopes

Many permissions are granted at a scope, which says whose records the permission reaches:

So an associate may hold Record time at own scope, while the head of litigation holds See recorded time at practice area scope.

Rules that always hold

• The managing partner holds every permission.
• Nobody may grant a permission they do not hold themselves.
• An ethical wall overrides every permission, the managing partner's included.
• The firm administrator role cannot lose the management of people and roles, and the managing partner role cannot lose the emergency override, so the firm can never lock itself out.
• A role that people still hold cannot be deleted; move them to another role first, or deactivate it.