In one sentence
In the firm DMS the most important state of a document is not “filed” but “blocked for the AI”: two of the six system folders are exempt from any AI processing by default, client uploads land in a doubly secured quarantine — and a document comes out of it only through a deliberate act.
Two of six system folders are AI-free by default
As soon as an AI is involved, a folder becomes an access decision — and that must not depend on whether somebody thought of it at the right moment. The AI exclusion is therefore a property of the filing structure itself here. Every case file is given a basic structure of six system folders; two of them are exempt from the outset:
- Storage only (no AI) — for everything that is to be kept but not processed.
- Client uploads (unchecked) — the entrance for everything that comes in from outside.
The second is the actual point. What a client uploads has been seen by nobody at the firm before it is in the system: the document that was requested — or a third party’s correspondence, someone else’s privileged material, something that should never have been uploaded. A system that immediately draws such files into the AI context has taken the decision before anyone could take it.
The quarantine is doubly secured
The exclusion does not depend on a single check, but on two independent ones:
- A database trigger sets the AI exclusion as soon as the document is filed in the quarantine folder — regardless of the route by which it got there.
- The automatic inbox triage skips the quarantine folder of its own accord; it does not even see it as a pool of work.
Two safeguards for the same case are not an oversight: if one fails — a new upload route, a rewritten condition — the other holds.
Releasing is an act, not a move
From this follows something that seems inconvenient at first: pulling a document out of quarantine is not enough. The exclusion the trigger set when the document was filed attaches to the document, not to the folder — it has to be lifted separately.
That is intentional: moving something is a tidying-up action, an AI release is a decision about other people’s confidential matters. The two should not coincide by accident.
Seven types of matter — suggested, never adopted
Every folder can carry one of seven types of matter, restricted by constraint to precisely these values: drafting, contentious proceedings, enforcement, interim relief, assessment of costs, correspondence, storage.
The AI suggests the type of matter but never adopts it automatically. The suggestion is cheap and mostly right; adopting it is a statement about what the matter is — and that is made by a human being.
What the row reveals by itself
Four markers appear on the document row: “uploaded by the client”, “released to the client”, “deadline detected”, “facts detected”. The second is the most important — deleting a document the client can already see is something other than doing the same with an internal note. You ought to see it before you act.
The context menu is grouped accordingly rather than alphabetically: “AI actions” (up to nine), “manage document” (up to eight), “compliance” (three). A compliance action therefore sits in a fixed place, not between two AI functions.
What the DMS does not do
- It does not decide what is confidential — it only holds reliably to what you have decided.
- It lifts no exclusion by itself, not even for obviously harmless documents.
- It does not check whether an upload is permissible. Whether uploaded third-party correspondence may be processed is an assessment under professional and data protection law; the quarantine buys you time for it, it does not relieve you of the assessment.
- It is not practice management software. We are AI software for working on case files; deadline monitoring, beA and accounting stay where they are.
→ Firm DMS · The case file · Compliance · Client portal
