Phase, status and holds
Phase
Where the litigation actually stands: Investigation → Discovery → Expert reports → Mediation → Trial. Advance or revert it from the overview tab.
Advancing re-evaluates what the client is allowed to see and releases nothing — that stays one deliberate click by the lead attorney. Reverting never un-shares what was already shared.
A phase change is one of the triggers that starts a fresh analysis run.
The analysis has a phase vocabulary of its own, finer than this one — intake, pre-filing, pleadings, written discovery, depositions, expert discovery, mediation, summary judgment, pretrial, trial preparation. It is what the engine judges the matter to be in, and it appears on each run.
Status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | An unfinished intake. Only its creator sees it. |
| Active | Live. |
| On hold | Paused, and still counted against your plan’s active-matter limit. |
| Closed | Frozen for every role. |
| Archived | Past its retention window. |
Closing a matter
Close the matter on the overview tab. An outcome is required — settled, dismissed, verdict, and so on.
Closing freezes writes for every role and starts the retention clock. Nothing on a closed matter is editable by anybody: its tasks go read-only, its message composer disappears while the history stays, and its settings stop saving.
Only the firm owner can reopen it.
Retention
Retention comes from the firm profile — a number of years after closing, set in Firm Settings → Firm. The clock starts at close, not at open.
A legal hold outranks it: a held matter is never deleted, whatever the retention setting says.
Legal hold
A legal hold freezes deletion of the matter and everything under it — documents, versions, and the audit trail. Setting one requires a typed reason, kept permanently.
- An attorney or the firm owner can set a hold.
- Only the firm owner can lift one, with a reason kept forever.
- The hold stops deletion, not editing. Fields still save; nothing is destroyed while it is on.
Destroying material the firm is required to keep can be treated as destroying evidence. That is why lifting a hold sits with one person and is recorded.