# The matter file, defensible

> Legal. Firms and legal departments must show what they kept, what they withheld and what they produced. Tabellix keeps matter files behind ethical walls, preserves them under hold, and produces them as sealed bundles the other side can verify.

## What gets asked: What courts, clients and opposing counsel ask.

- **Preservation.** Proof that nothing under a legal hold was destroyed or altered while the hold applied.
- **Access to the matter.** Whether a conflicted lawyer could reach the matter, and every view and download by anyone who did.
- **Productions.** Every document produced to each party, which version, in which production.
- **Redactions.** The privilege or confidentiality reason for each redaction, and who approved it.
- **The produced copy.** Whether the copy in front of the court matches what left the firm, byte for byte.
- **Custodian acknowledgements.** Which custodians received the hold notice, which version, and when they acknowledged it.

## How Tabellix answers: Every answer, on the record.

- **Holds that block destruction.** A legal hold blocks disposition and destruction whatever the retention says, and narrowing it needs approval. Versions are never edited, so preservation is provable.
- **Ethical walls that hold.** An explicit denial always overrides a grant, and a walled lawyer cannot tell that the matter exists. Search results, lists and counts treat hidden and missing the same way.
- **Every production accounted for.** For any recipient or document: every version released, through which disclosure, with digests.
- **Redaction by two people.** A redaction is proposed, approved by a second person with a fresh sign-in, and released as an image-only PDF with its reason codes.
- **Productions verified offline.** Each production is a sealed, deterministic, signed bundle that opposing counsel or the court can [verify offline](https://tabellix.dev/trust/), with no access to your systems.
- **Hold notices, acknowledged.** The hold notice is a versioned document, and each acknowledgement is an event record linked to the exact version the custodian received.

## Typical records: A matter, and everything in it.

| Record | Kind | What it holds |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Matter M-2026-0117 | case record | Pleadings, correspondence, evidence and work product as ordered members; holds, retention and the wall flow to every member. |
| Conflict check | event record | The parties searched, the result and the person who cleared it, linked to the matter and locked at capture. |
| Engagement letter | document | Versioned, approved with the responsible lawyer's signature, and shared with the client. |
| Legal hold notice | document | Versioned, so the exact revision each custodian received stays in the history. |
| Hold acknowledgement | event record | Custodian, notice version and time, locked at capture. |

[Documents, records and the evidence about both](https://tabellix.dev/records/)

## Go deeper

- [Security](https://tabellix.dev/security/): Deny by default, hidden existence, policy as code and a hardened platform.
- [Privacy and retention](https://tabellix.dev/privacy-retention/): Keep what the law requires and erase what privacy law allows, with the audit trail intact.
- [Trust and verifiability](https://tabellix.dev/trust/): A hash-chained ledger, signed checkpoints and evidence an auditor verifies offline.
- [Agents](https://tabellix.dev/agents/): AI agents act for a person, never above that person, and named people stay accountable.
- [Law enforcement and courts](https://tabellix.dev/industries/law-enforcement-courts/): Evidence and case records with sealing and a tamper-evident history.

## FAQ: Common questions.

### Can clients and co-counsel see the file without an account in our system?

Yes. Invited accounts from a separate identity issuer, with a second factor if you require one, see what you share: expiring, watermarked, with an agreement before content and a report of what each fetched. For a transaction, a data room shares a folder tree with several parties.

### Can AI agents review documents?

An agent can search, read and summarize under the lawyer's own permissions and inside the same walls. When it reads another party's text, its session trust drops and it may write less, so text in an opposing party's documents narrows what the agent can do. Under the regulated preset, only people approve and sign.

### What happens to a matter when its retention ends?

The system proposes the disposition, a records administrator approves it, and the content is crypto-shredded. The matter's identity and history remain, and the ledger still verifies.

### How does a practice or matter management vendor embed Tabellix?

Your product keeps its matter screens, billing and calendars. Tabellix keeps the documents, holds, walls, productions and audit trail underneath, through one contract over gRPC, REST or MCP, and ships under your brand.

## Contact

Tell us what you build and who audits it. We'll show you how Tabellix fits into your product and how it answers your auditors' most common questions.

Contact form: https://tabellix.dev/contact/

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