Overview
Contact visibility lets your firm control who can view a contact's Engage activity and results. Every contact is either firm-wide, so any user at your firm can see it, or restricted to one or more departments.
This is most useful for larger firms with lawyers and fee earners across multiple departments who want to limit who can see sensitive client information, and for firms running employee checks in Legl.
What you can use contact visibility for
Restrict a contact's Engage requests and results to one or more departments
Keep a contact's onboarding activity and checks private to the acting team
Give more than one department access to a contact where needed, for example the acting team and the compliance team
Protect the records of VIP or sensitive clients, and of employees checked through Legl
Strengthen your firm's privacy posture as you add more users across departments
How contact visibility works
Each contact carries a single visibility setting, and that setting applies to all of that contact's Engage requests.
Firm-wide: any user at your firm can view and act on the contact and its Engage requests.
Restricted: only users in the selected departments can view and act on the contact. More than one department can be selected.
When a new Engage request is created, the contact's visibility is automatically set to the department of the assigned reviewer.
Only firm admins can change a contact's visibility after that.
Users in a department that does not have access cannot view the contact's Engage activity or results, and cannot create an Engage request, run a check, or edit that contact. Their Engage list shows only the requests assigned to their own department.
Legl keeps an audit trail of every visibility change, showing what it was changed to, when, and who changed it.
Firm admins can always view and manage every contact and every Engage request.
Where to find contact visibility in Legl
A contact's current setting appears as "Visibility: restricted" or "Visibility: firm-wide" on the Contact Details screen. Admin users can change it from there, and can open the audit history to see previous changes.
Contact visibility is turned on per firm under Settings > Users & Permissions > Contact settings. It is available as an early access feature to both new and existing customers, and has to be enabled by Legl.
If you would like it enabled for your firm, contact our Support team.
Permissions and access
Firm admins can view and manage all contacts and Engage requests, change a contact's visibility, and grant a department access to a contact.
All other users can act on firm-wide contacts, and on restricted contacts assigned to their own department.
If you open a link to a contact or request you do not have access to, you will see a message explaining you do not have permission to view it. Contact an admin, who can grant your department access.
Important information
Contact visibility currently applies to Engage requests only. It does not yet apply to Risk Assessments or payments.
It restricts a contact's Engage results and activity, not the contact's personal details. Users in other departments may still see a contact's name, email address, and address.
Visibility is set by department, not by named user. Restricting a contact to specific individuals is not available in this release.
Contact visibility is not an ethical wall or information barrier for managing conflicts of interest. It is designed to protect client information.
A contact that has not been restricted stays firm-wide, so any user can act on it until an Engage request or an admin restricts it.