Overview
Ethical walls let your firm control who can see a contact's Engage workflows. Ethical walls apply to individual contacts. Each individual contact is either firm-wide, so any user at your firm can see its Engage workflows, or restricted to the named users and departments you choose. You may also see this called contact visibility.
This is most useful for firms that work with sensitive or confidential clients, run employee checks in Legl, or want to limit who can see a client's onboarding checks.
What you can use Ethical walls for
Restrict a contact's Engage workflows to named users, to one or more departments, or to both
Keep a sensitive or VIP client's onboarding checks private to the people working on the matter
Give more than one team access where needed, for example the acting team and the compliance team
Protect the records of employees checked through Legl
How Ethical walls work
Each contact has one access setting, and it applies to all of that contact's Engage workflows.
Firm-wide: all users can view the contact's Engage workflows.
Restricted: only the users and departments you select can view them.
Access is set when the contact is created, either from Create contact or when creating an Engage request for a new contact. The person creating it must give themselves access.
Every change is recorded in the contact's history: what changed, who changed it and when.
When an Admin turns on Ethical walls, existing contacts stay Firm-wide, so nobody loses access.
Admins can set a default visibility for new contacts: Firm-wide (the default), or Restricted to the department of the person creating the contact. The person creating a contact can still choose a different setting.
Where to find Ethical walls in Legl
Governance > Ethical walls > Configure: Admins turn Ethical walls on and set the default visibility.
When you create a contact: choose under Who can see this contact's Engage workflows?
On a contact's page: next to Visibility. Admins select Edit to change access, or History to see who changed it.
ℹ️ Further guidance
Permissions and access
Only Admins can turn Ethical walls on or off, set the default visibility and change who has access.
Admins can see every contact's Engage workflows.
Other users can see Engage workflows for firm-wide contacts, and for restricted contacts they have been given access to by name or department.
Without access, the Activity tab shows "You don't have permission to view these details". See Understanding what users can see with Ethical walls.
Important information
Ethical walls apply to individual contacts' Engage workflows only. Business, trust and vessel contacts, Risk Assessments and payments are not affected.
Other users can still find a restricted contact and see their details: name, email address, address, date of birth and phone number.
Engage requests created through a practice management system integration start Firm-wide. There is no bulk change, so an Admin changes each contact in Legl one at a time.
Ethical walls are not available for firms that use the Consultancy Model. See What is the Consultancy Model in Legl?. To register your interest, contact our Support team.
Before you deactivate a user, check whether they are the only non-Admin user with access to any contacts. See How to deactivate or remove a user from Legl.