A lawyer is bound by professional secrecy, and every document a client entrusts to them depends on it. In practice, these documents travel by email, by instant messaging, sometimes through a transfer link nobody checks the lifespan of. The risk almost never comes from bad intent. It comes from a message sent to the wrong recipient, a document forwarded too widely, a shared inbox read by too many people.
This article does not cover the content of professional secrecy: its scope and exceptions fall under your professional rules and your bar, which remain the only references. It covers what you control day to day, meaning how documents move between you, your client and those who take part around them.
Where a file's documents leak in practice
The email with several recipients. An address copied out of habit, a reply-all, a forward that drags the whole history along. Every copy then escapes your control.
The attachment that stays. Once sent, it lives in the client's mailbox, on their phone, sometimes on a computer shared with family or employer. The client no longer knows where it is either.
The personal channel. A client writing to your personal number, a photo of a document sent by messaging app: the line between the file and private life disappears on both sides.
The endless link. A sharing link created "just once" that stays active for months, open to anyone who holds it.
Five habits that limit the damage
1. A single channel for documents. Choose where they are dropped, and tell the client once. Anything that arrives elsewhere gets moved into that channel, then deleted from the other.
2. Named access. Everyone who sees the file must be identifiable: the client, their spouse if a party, an associated director. Access shared by several people no longer says who read what.
3. Third parties who only see their part. An accountant, a bailiff, a colleague or an expert may take part. They don't need to see the strategy or the documents that don't concern them. Decide at the outset what each can read; restricting at the start is simpler than fixing a sharing that was too wide.
4. Internal notes that never leave the firm. Your risk analysis and your exchanges with your paralegal must never sit in the same thread as what the client reads. Separate them structurally, not by caution at the moment of writing.
5. Access removal in one gesture. When a third party has finished their part, or when a colleague leaves the firm, remove their access the same day. A forgotten access is an open door.
Traceability: knowing who viewed what
The day a client, a colleague or an authority asks who was aware of a document, the answer is not found in a mailbox. An access log answers three questions: who, which document, when. It is rarely needed, and when it is, it is needed a lot.
Also keep a record of what you asked the client for and what they uploaded: the date a document was received can matter, and an exchange scattered across three channels does not supply it.
What a tool does not replace
A sharing tool does not establish your compliance. It replaces neither reading the rules of your profession, nor your bar's guidance, nor your own analysis of what is or isn't covered by secrecy. Nor does it exempt you from informing your clients about how their documents are handled. It simply makes an ordinary mistake harder to make: that is already a lot.
With Kolinea
Kolinea promises no regulatory compliance; it organises sharing. Each client enters their folder through a personal link, confirmed by an email code, with no account to create. The directors of one company can each have their own.
Each publication is chosen as visible to all, internal to your team, or confidential: read by the firm and only the people it names or mentions, the client for instance, including in reminders and exports; a participant it does not name does not see it: it does not appear for them. The access log records who viewed which document, it can be exported, and you can remove access at any time. Documents requested from the client are followed through a document request, one document at a time.
The lawyers page shows a complete dispute folder, whose button opens the example folder, and the Security and privacy page details how it works. To open a first folder, go to the home page.