Set the firm's retention policy
A retention period, deletion or archiving on expiry, and warning emails before anything is processed.
Screenshots are taken from the app on every release. Updated 13 October 2026.
The firm's data protection policy says client work is not kept longer than it is needed, and the risk team wants Juristic to follow it without someone going through old matters by hand. A retention policy does that: work that nobody has changed for a set number of months is deleted or archived, and the members of its matter are warned first.
Two questions decide the settings. How long does the firm keep client work after it goes quiet? And should expired work be deleted, or kept out of the way?
Set the policy
Open Admin panel from your user menu, and under Organisation choose Data retention.
Under Retention Policy Settings, turn on Enable Retention Policy.
Set the Retention period with the minus and plus buttons, from 1 to 48 months. The clock runs from the last change to each structure, timeline, board, Insight table or screening. Opening it to read does not reset the clock.
Under When data expires, choose Delete to remove expired work permanently, or Archive to archive it and keep it.
Click Save. Juristic asks Are you sure you want to change the retention policy? and warns that the change may lead to data loss. Click Confirm. (If you ticked Don't show again on an earlier save in the same browser, the question is skipped.)
The change is recorded in the audit log as Data retention policy updated.
What happens before anything is processed
About a week before a piece of work expires, every member of its matter gets an email with a link to it. From the link they can keep it, which starts its retention period again, or confirm the deletion or archiving. Nothing is deleted or archived before the date given in the email. See keep a matter that is due for deletion.
Choose the setting for the firm
| The firm's position | Retention period | When data expires |
|---|---|---|
| Starting out, and unsure how much old work there is | Generous, for example 36 months | Archive |
| A written retention schedule that requires deletion | The period in the schedule | Delete |
| Clients who expect their data removed soon after the work ends | Short, for example 12 months | Delete |
Tips from practice
- Start with Archive. Archiving keeps expired work instead of destroying it, so a period that turns out to be too short has not cost the firm anything. Move to Delete once the firm is sure.
- Tell the lawyers before you turn it on. The warning emails go to everyone on the matter. A short note to the firm explaining what they are, and that they can keep work they still need, saves a lot of questions. See tell everyone in the firm about a change.
- Make sure old matters still have someone on them. The warning email goes only to the matter's members. If everyone on a matter has left the firm, no one is warned, so add a current lawyer first. If no one left on the matter can add them, ask Juristic support.
For finished matters the team should stop seeing every day, see close and archive a finished matter.