🔐 Protect Sensitive Legal Work with Attorney Client Privilege in Legal Service Delivery
Legal teams routinely handle highly sensitive communications and documents that must be protected under attorney‑client privilege. Without consistent controls, privileged information can be inadvertently exposed through broad access, collaboration, or automated notifications.
The Attorney Client Privilege (ACP) capability in Legal Service Delivery enables legal teams to explicitly designate legal requests and legal matters as privileged and confidential, ensuring that access, collaboration, and communications are restricted to authorized stakeholders.
📘 What Is Attorney Client Privilege in Legal Service Delivery?
Attorney Client Privilege enables legal fulfillers and matter owners to mark legal requests and legal matters as privileged and confidential. When enabled, the system enforces access restrictions, adds confidentiality indicators, and maintains a document audit trail to help protect sensitive legal communications.
Attorney‑Client Privilege applies to:
- Legal Requests in Assigned or Work in Progress state
- Legal Matters in Assigned or Work in Progress state
The privileged status of a legal request and its associated legal matter are tracked independently.
🔍 Why It Matters
Attorney client privilege is foundational to legal practice. The ACP capability helps organizations:
- Protect sensitive communications by restricting access to authorized users
- Prevent accidental disclosure during collaboration and notifications
- Clearly signal privileged content through visible UI indicators
- Maintain defensible records with document access tracking and audit history
These controls help legal teams enforce privilege consistently across requests, matters, and communications.
▶️ How It Works
1. Mark a Legal Request or Matter as Privileged
Legal fulfillers and matter owners can mark a legal request or legal matter as Privileged and Confidential when it is in the Assigned or Work in Progress state.
2. Access Is Automatically Restricted
When a request or matter is marked as privileged:
- Access is limited to authorized stakeholders
- Assignment group permissions are automatically updated to No access
- Collaboration is restricted to approved users only
3. Confidentiality Indicators Are Applied
Privileged and confidential records are clearly identified using:
- A Privileged and Confidential flag displayed in the record header
- A Privileged document access related list that shows attachment access status
4. Emails and Notifications Are Marked Confidential
All email communications generated from privileged and confidential requests or matters—including system notifications and fulfiller‑initiated emails—include confidentiality markers to comply with legal requirements.
5. Stakeholder Changes Are Tracked
When collaborators, watchlist entries, or fulfiller assignments change on a privileged request or matter, notifications are sent to relevant stakeholders. All such notifications include confidentiality markers.
✨ Key Capabilities
- Explicit privilege designation on legal requests and legal matters
- Automatic access control enforcement for privileged records
- Clear UI indicators for privileged and confidential items
- Confidential handling of emails and notifications
- Document access visibility through privileged document tracking
📝 Promoting Legal Requests to Legal Matters
Legal requests can be promoted to legal matters by creating a new matter or adding the request to an existing matter.
- When creating a new matter, the privileged status of the request determines the initial privileged status of the matter
- When adding a request to an existing matter, the existing matter’s privileged status is retained
This ensures privilege handling remains consistent across the request‑to‑matter lifecycle.
🛠 Configuration Considerations (High Level)
- Attorney‑Client Privilege is available for legal requests and legal matters
- The capability is not available for legal contract requests, such as NDAs or third‑party contracts submitted through Contract Management Pro
- Privilege can be applied or removed independently on requests and matters, subject to state requirements
🚀 Getting Started with Attorney‑Client Privilege
To begin using Attorney Client Privilege in Legal Service Delivery:
- Review the Attorney Client Privilege documentation to understand scope, behavior, and limitations:
- Train legal fulfillers and matter owners on when and how to mark records as privileged and confidential
- Incorporate Attorney Client Privilege into internal legal and compliance policies to ensure consistent usage
Attorney Client Privilege helps legal teams protect sensitive information while continuing to collaborate and manage work efficiently within Legal Service Delivery.
