Tip #226 - How To Lock A Case to Prevent Access

Occasionally your firm may need to limit or prevent access by certain staff to certain cases, e.g., due to conflict of interest or a matter that is particularly sensitive. So, the firm will need to set up what we refer to as an “ethical wall." The easiest way to do that in SmartAdvocate is to “Lock” the specific case. This is pretty straight forward.

Here's How:

1. From the Case’s Summary Screen, click the blue “edit” button on the far right

2. Check the Locked Case checkbox

3. Click the Save button to save your changes

Since there are some staff who will need to access Locked Cases, you will need to create a Permission Group that will allow this access, and then add those staff members to that group.

First, let’s create the Permission Group and then define the access levels:

1. Go to Admin >> User Permission Group

2. You can then click on the “New Group” button in the top left of the page or simply copy one of the existing groups (click the copy button).

    

If you choose to create a new group from scratch, you will need to set all the individual permissions and access levels for all the screens, pages and tabs in SmartAdvocate as appropriate for that group. The copy function, however, will allow you to copy an existing group and all the preset permissions for that group to the new one.
 

3. Regardless of which option you choose (i.e., create a new group from scratch or copy a similar existing group to a new one), you will need to set the access level for the new group for Locked Cases. There are three permission levels that can be set:

a. Locked cases - access to all Locked Cases

b. Locked cases assigned to user – access to locked cases only if the user is assigned to the case

c. No access to locked cases – the user will not have access to any locked cases regardless of whether they are assigned to the case or not

The second step is to edit all the other permission groups (other than the one you just created for Locked Cases) to make sure that those permission groups are set to “No access to locked cases.”

Next, you will need to go to your list of users and adjust which permission group(s) the individual users as put into.

Here’s How:

1. Go to Admin >> Users

2. Locate the user whose permission group assignment you want to edit

3. Click the edit button on the far right of the page and add or remove the group(s) to which the user is assigned to as appropriate

It is important to remember that the user will have the highest permission level of the group(s) that he/she is assigned to. So, if a user is in the groups Administrators and Paralegals, that user will have whatever the highest access level is for either group (in this example most likely Administrators).