Chinese walls

If your firm runs both a legal and a notarial practice, Dutch law requires you to keep the two sides apart, so that a lawyer can't see what's happening on a notary's files, and a notary can't see what's happening on a lawyer's. Legalsense enforces this separation for you as a Chinese wall: a barrier that hides matters, time entries, and invoices on one side of the wall from users on the other.

Why Chinese walls exist

A civil-law notary in the Netherlands has to act as an independent, impartial office holder, even at a firm that combines a notarial practice with a law firm under one roof, one brand, and one set of back-office systems. Regulators expect a combined firm to be able to show that the two practices can't casually browse each other's files. Chinese walls are how Legalsense supports that separation inside the software itself, on top of whatever organizational and physical measures your firm already has in place.

Note: This is a different feature from the conflict check. The conflict check is a name-search tool that helps you spot a potential conflict of interest before you take on a matter. A Chinese wall is an access barrier that hides matters and their financial data from one side of your firm entirely, regardless of any conflict. See the article ↪ Conflict check for the name-search tool.

Enabling Chinese walls

Chinese walls aren't active by default. Contact Legalsense support to enable the feature for your firm.

Assigning a Chinese wall kind

Once enabled, a Chinese wall kind field appears on practice groups and, separately, on individual matters. It has three states:

• Both: the practice group or matter isn't restricted by the wall, and both sides can see it.
• Lawyer: the practice group or matter sits on the legal side of the wall.
• Notary: the practice group or matter sits on the notarial side.

The Chinese wall field present when creating a new matter. This value cannot be changed later.

Important: You choose the Chinese wall kind when you create the practice group or matter. It can't be changed afterward, so make sure it's correct the first time. See the article ↪ Practice groups for the rest of a practice group's fields, including how a group's Chinese wall kind also limits which matters can be assigned to it.

What the wall hides

With Chinese walls enabled, a user on one side of the wall no longer sees matters, time, or money that belong to the other side. Specifically:

• Matter visibility and detail: a user can't open or see the details of a matter on the other side of the wall.
• Matter lists: the edit, archive, and delete actions for a matter on the other side don't appear in the matter list.
• Autocomplete and lookups: matters on the other side don't show up when a user starts typing a matter name elsewhere in Legalsense.
• Global and conflict search: results from the other side of the wall are left out of search and out of the conflict check.
• Financial reporting: reports don't include figures for matters on the other side.
• Time entries: a user can't see time entries written on a matter on the other side, except for entries they wrote themselves. You can always see your own time, regardless of which side of the wall the matter is on.
• Invoices: invoices for a matter on the other side aren't visible either.

Each of these checks also looks at which side of the wall the matter's practice group sits on, not only the matter's own Chinese wall kind, so keep the two consistent.

Crossing the wall

Two things can, on purpose, cross the wall:

• The can_view_through_walls permission. A user who holds this permission, typically a partner, sees every matter regardless of the wall. See the article ↪ Permission groups in Legalsense to learn where this sits among the other matter permissions.
• Notaries logging time on lawyer matters. By default, a notary can't log time on a matter on the lawyer side of the wall. If your firm needs this, ask Legalsense support to enable it for you.

Chinese walls and NetDocuments

If your firm uses the NetDocuments integration, you can extend the same separation to your document management: lawyer and notary matters can be routed to distinct NetDocuments cabinets, so documents follow the same wall as the matters they belong to. See the section "Chinese wall compliance" in the article ↪ NetDocuments Integration Guide.