Onboard a 10-lawyer firm in an hour, not a day
AI.Law's permissions system gives multi-lawyer firms 15 built-in roles, per-matter visibility controls, confidentiality tiers aligned with real protective-order language, and a bulk-import tool that turns a CSV from your old system into a working AI.Law org in minutes — not a week of seat-by-seat clicks.
Firmwide controls and integrations — included on Advanced (Win) and Enterprise. See pricing
How Permissions & Roles works on a live matter
Permissions & Roles is the AI.Law tool civil litigators use for document, research, and case-strategy work. Switching legal software used to mean a week of seat-by-seat re-creation: invite each user, assign each matter, set each role. AI.Law's import wizard inverts the cost. Upload the matters CSV from your old system, map columns to AI.Law fields (the wizard auto-maps Clio / MyCase / PracticePanther headers), pick role assignments by team or by matter, click Run. The 47-matter, 10-user firm goes live in an hour. The 500-matter, 30-user firm goes live in an afternoon.
On a live matter it runs in 4 steps: (1) Turn on advanced permissions, (2) Map your firm to roles, (3) Add confidentiality tiers and team assignments, (4) Import from your old system. A firm-owner or org-admin flips the Advanced Permissions toggle in Org Settings. Nothing changes for existing flows — the toggle gates the new admin tabs and new bulk actions.
Most legal-tech platforms ship with three roles (admin, attorney, paralegal) and an org-wide read switch. That's not how real firms work. Plaintiffs' firms have intake specialists who shouldn't see medical-record privileged docs. Defense firms have document reviewers who need access to specific matters only. In-house teams have panel-counsel attorneys with read-only access to assigned cases. AI.Law's 15 built-in roles cover every variation: Firm Owner, Org Admin, Attorney, In-House Counsel, Panel Counsel, Prosecutor, Criminal Defense Attorney, Contract Attorney, Paralegal, Legal Assistant, Intake Specialist, Medical Records Reviewer, Document Reviewer, Investigator, and Client Advocate. Each role has tuned defaults; firms can clone-and-customize for further specialization. Confidentiality tiers aligned with real protective-order language: Confidential, Highly Confidential — Attorneys' Eyes Only, Trade Secret. Tag documents at upload; only users with clearance see them in search, AI prompts, and document lists.
What you get from Permissions & Roles
Every Permissions & Roles run is grounded in your uploaded matter — not a blank chat prompt. Here is what attorneys use on real cases:
- Confidentiality tiers aligned with real protective-order language: Confidential, Highly Confidential — Attorneys' Eyes Only, Trade Secret. Tag documents at upload; only users with clearance see them in search, AI prompts, and document lists.
- Per-matter visibility model: assigned attorneys see their cases, teams see team-assigned matters, intake staff see only prospects. The matter list each user sees on Monday morning is exactly the cases they should be working on.
- Senior/junior approval workflow built in: junior staff produce drafts, senior attorneys approve. The AI never publishes a junior draft until a senior signs off.
- Org-wide notification preference defaults with per-user opt-out — your firm decides which categories ship to inbox vs email, your attorneys override for themselves.
- Header auto-detection covers Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, Smokeball, and generic CSV exports — including the "matter_number" vs "File Number" vs "Case ID" naming variations.
- Bulk invite with role assignment in the same wizard step — no more inviting 30 people then editing 30 roles.
- Single-screen People page with multi-select checkboxes, bulk role assignment, and bulk team add — no per-user clicking.
- Built-in role picker with tier groupings (Owner / Admin / Attorney / Support staff) so admins pick the right role without memorizing 15 names.
How It Works
Get started in minutes. No training required.
1. Turn on advanced permissions
A firm-owner or org-admin flips the Advanced Permissions toggle in Org Settings. Nothing changes for existing flows — the toggle gates the new admin tabs and new bulk actions.
2. Map your firm to roles
Visit Org Admin → People. The 15 built-in roles cover most positions; if not, clone one and customize. Bulk-select team members, apply a role to all at once.
3. Add confidentiality tiers and team assignments
Open the Confidentiality Tiers tab. Three real-PO tiers are pre-seeded (Confidential, AEO, Highly Confidential). Add Trade Secret or custom tiers per matter. Build teams from the Teams tab, bulk-add users.
4. Import from your old system
Open the Import Data tab. Drop your matters CSV from Clio / MyCase / PracticePanther / etc. The wizard auto-detects columns, lets you assign matter-to-attorney by upload, runs the import, and confirms the row count.
5. Set notification defaults
Open the Notification Defaults tab. Pick which categories your firm wants in inbox vs email by default. Individual attorneys override on the My Notifications page if they want different settings.
More Detail
15 built-in roles, real-PO confidentiality tiers, and per-matter visibility that mirrors how actual firms operate
Most legal-tech platforms ship with three roles (admin, attorney, paralegal) and an org-wide read switch. That's not how real firms work. Plaintiffs' firms have intake specialists who shouldn't see medical-record privileged docs. Defense firms have document reviewers who need access to specific matters only. In-house teams have panel-counsel attorneys with read-only access to assigned cases. AI.Law's 15 built-in roles cover every variation: Firm Owner, Org Admin, Attorney, In-House Counsel, Panel Counsel, Prosecutor, Criminal Defense Attorney, Contract Attorney, Paralegal, Legal Assistant, Intake Specialist, Medical Records Reviewer, Document Reviewer, Investigator, and Client Advocate. Each role has tuned defaults; firms can clone-and-customize for further specialization.
- Confidentiality tiers aligned with real protective-order language: Confidential, Highly Confidential — Attorneys' Eyes Only, Trade Secret. Tag documents at upload; only users with clearance see them in search, AI prompts, and document lists.
- Per-matter visibility model: assigned attorneys see their cases, teams see team-assigned matters, intake staff see only prospects. The matter list each user sees on Monday morning is exactly the cases they should be working on.
- Senior/junior approval workflow built in: junior staff produce drafts, senior attorneys approve. The AI never publishes a junior draft until a senior signs off.
- Org-wide notification preference defaults with per-user opt-out — your firm decides which categories ship to inbox vs email, your attorneys override for themselves.
Faster
CSV import wizard turns a Clio / MyCase / PracticePanther export into a working AI.Law org in under an hour
Switching legal software used to mean a week of seat-by-seat re-creation: invite each user, assign each matter, set each role. AI.Law's import wizard inverts the cost. Upload the matters CSV from your old system, map columns to AI.Law fields (the wizard auto-maps Clio / MyCase / PracticePanther headers), pick role assignments by team or by matter, click Run. The 47-matter, 10-user firm goes live in an hour. The 500-matter, 30-user firm goes live in an afternoon.
- Header auto-detection covers Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, Smokeball, and generic CSV exports — including the "matter_number" vs "File Number" vs "Case ID" naming variations.
- Bulk invite with role assignment in the same wizard step — no more inviting 30 people then editing 30 roles.
- Bulk matter→attorney assignment by upload column — every imported matter lands on the right attorney's dashboard before the user logs in.
- Bulk team add: build teams once, drop new users into the team that matches their job, and matter visibility wires itself.
Easier
Your admin sees every user, every team, every role — one screen, not a navigation puzzle
Most legal CMS admin surfaces force the admin to click into each user, scroll to find the right tab, change one setting, save, repeat. AI.Law's org-admin People page is a single dashboard: every user, their roles, their teams, their default-attorney / default-paralegal status, with bulk select for any operation. Multi-select 12 paralegals → bulk set role → done. Pick 8 users and bulk-add them to a litigation team. The admin's mental model maps to one screen.
- Single-screen People page with multi-select checkboxes, bulk role assignment, and bulk team add — no per-user clicking.
- Built-in role picker with tier groupings (Owner / Admin / Attorney / Support staff) so admins pick the right role without memorizing 15 names.
- Confidentiality Tier admin tab to add firm-specific tiers (e.g., "AEO — Source Code" for an IP case) on top of the four built-ins.
- Pending invitations table with retry — failed-email invites surface immediately so the admin can resend without opening a ticket.
More Money
Stop bleeding revenue on the wrong people seeing the wrong matters
Permissions failures cost firms in three concrete ways: (1) an associate accidentally produces a document with privileged content that should have been withheld for attorney review — sanctions risk. (2) An intake specialist sees medical records on a prospect's case before the firm decides whether to take it — privacy violation. (3) A paralegal on a contingency case sees fee data on a separate hourly case and reports settlement amounts inappropriately — engagement risk. AI.Law's role + tier + matter-visibility model prevents each of these with no daily attorney attention. The audit log tells you when a Highly Confidential doc was viewed, by whom, on which matter — so a partner reviewing a privilege log knows immediately if something needs to be clawed back.
- Audit log of every confidentiality-tier change and every matter-visibility decision — show the bar association or your malpractice carrier what your controls look like.
- Per-matter override prevents the "AI accidentally summarizes a privileged doc into a discovery draft" failure mode that worried partners early on.
- Bulk role changes during reorganizations: lateral attorney hire moves 20 matters into their queue in one bulk operation; no settlement falls through the cracks because someone forgot to reassign.
- Onboarding time savings of 6–8 hours per new hire at a multi-lawyer firm — across a 10-lawyer firm, that's 60–80 hours of attorney/admin time recovered per year of hiring activity.
Stop treating a 10-lawyer firm like a single-user signup
See what changes when AI handles the work instead.
| Area | The Old Way | With AI.Law |
|---|---|---|
| Built-in roles | 3 roles (admin / attorney / paralegal). Anything specialized requires custom permission tables. | 15 built-in roles covering in-house, panel counsel, prosecutors, criminal defense, plus support staff variations. Clone-and-customize for firm-specific roles. |
| Confidentiality tiers | Single "private" flag or no tier system at all. | Four real-PO tiers pre-seeded (Confidential, Highly Confidential, AEO, Trade Secret). Per-org custom tiers. Document-level tagging with clearance enforcement. |
| Bulk operations | Click into each user, change one setting, save, repeat — 30 users = 30 sessions. | Multi-select on the People page → bulk set role, bulk add to team, bulk assign matters. 30 users = one toolbar action. |
| CSV import | Manual seat-by-seat recreation when migrating from Clio / MyCase. 30 matters = 90 minutes of clicking. | Header-auto-detect CSV wizard. 30 matters with assignees and teams pre-mapped = 5 minutes. |
| Audit & compliance | No audit log of who saw what when. Privilege-log compromises become discovery disputes. | Every confidentiality-tier change and visibility decision logged. Export for bar-association review or malpractice underwriting. |
Related tools for Permissions & Roles
Same matter file, same uploads — keep working in this litigation workflow cluster.
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- Control API tokens alongside role permissions — API Access
Browse all Admin tools on the features hub, or see all features.
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