Personal Conflicts — Enforced at Every Layer
When a new case names an entity on an attorney’s personal conflict list, that attorney is automatically excluded from the notification, blocked from the case folder, and logged in a dedicated audit trail. They never see the case. They never know it exists. And they cannot access the files even if they find the link.
Not just notification filtering — true access enforcement. Drive permissions revoked, audit trail permanent, admin notified automatically.
Why It Matters
- Eliminates manual steps in conflict screening
- Attorneys aren’t burdened with disclosing conflicts case-by-case
- Case files are inaccessible — not just hidden, but permission-blocked
- Dedicated audit log supports compliance with bar association and regulatory review requirements
- Retroactive enforcement catches conflicts added after a case was filed
How It Works
In the Reviewer List spreadsheet, each attorney has a Personal Conflicts column. The admin enters comma-separated entity names — former employers, family businesses, opposing parties from prior careers, or any entity that creates a personal conflict of interest. Attorneys can also update their own conflict list from the dashboard.
Three Enforcement Points
- Notification exclusion — when a new intake matches an attorney’s conflict list, that attorney is silently removed from the notification email. The rest of the team receives the case normally.
- Drive access blocked — the conflicted attorney is excluded from the case folder’s sharing permissions. Even if they discover the folder URL, Google Drive denies access.
- Vote gate — if a conflicted attorney attempts to vote on a case through the dashboard, the system rejects the action and logs the attempt.
What the Attorney Sees
Nothing. That’s the point. The notification email goes to every eligible reviewer — minus anyone with a personal conflict. The excluded attorney’s inbox looks exactly the same as if no case had been filed. The case folder doesn’t appear in their Drive. The dashboard blocks any vote attempt with a clear message.
Retroactive Enforcement
If an attorney’s conflict list is updated after cases have already been filed, the system immediately re-scans all existing cases. Any case with a matching entity has Drive access revoked for that attorney — automatically, with no manual intervention.
A daily safety-net scan also runs overnight, catching any edge cases where conflicts were added through unusual paths. Between the immediate retroactive scan and the daily sweep, no conflict goes unenforced.
Audit Trail
Every ethical wall action is recorded in two places:
- Ethical Wall Log — a dedicated sheet tracking every exclusion and revocation with the case ID, reviewer email, matched entity, the reviewer’s conflict that triggered the match, and whether it was an initial exclusion, a retroactive revocation, or caught by the daily scan.
- System Logs — ethical wall events appear alongside all other system activity, filterable with a single click in the dashboard.
The admin receives an email notification whenever ethical wall enforcement is triggered, summarizing how many cases were affected and for which reviewer.
Dashboard Visibility
Admins see ethical wall enforcement directly in the dashboard:
- Case detail panel — a purple “Ethical Wall Enforcement” section lists every reviewer excluded from that case, which entity triggered it, and when.
- Team activity chart — each attorney’s enforcement count is shown alongside their accept/decline/pending/conflict stats.
- System logs — a quick-filter button surfaces all ethical wall events instantly.
Key Details
- Simple management — conflict lists managed in a spreadsheet column or self-service from the dashboard
- Smart matching — uses the same entity normalization and token overlap algorithm as conflict detection
- Drive-level enforcement — conflicted attorneys lose editor access to case folders, not just notifications
- Retroactive — conflict list updates trigger immediate re-scan and revocation of existing case access
- Daily safety net — automated overnight scan catches anything missed
- Dedicated audit log — every action timestamped with case, reviewer, entity, and trigger source
- Admin alerts — email notification on every enforcement action
- Immediate effect — changes apply to the very next intake and retroactively to all existing cases