The Matter File

The record that outlasts the case

The longest-lived part of a lawsuit is its file. The case ends in a verdict, a settlement, or a dismissal, and the people who worked on it move on. The file stays behind for years. It has to answer questions no one thought to ask while the case was open: what the firm told the client, which draft went out, whose papers are whose.

This reading walks through one matter record in the order it fills up. First come the fields that say who and what the case is about. Then come the documents, the servers that hold them, the messages to the client, and what happens to all of it at the end. At each part it names the Florida rule or ethics opinion that governs it. In the activity, you build that record from a folder no one kept this way.

A matter record starts with fields: the client, the parties on the other side, their lawyers and insurers, the court and case number, and the dates that drive the work. Those fields do more than fill a screen. Conflict searches run against the names already in a firm’s records, so a name that never reaches a field can never produce a match. And the first check on a new case runs before most of those names exist. The defendant’s insurer surfaces once the firm sends its first letter, and defense counsel when the answer is filed. Each is a new name to run against the firm’s clients. When the same insurer or the same defense firm turns up in two of the firm’s cases, the record should show it, so a lawyer can decide whether it matters.

A name for every document, and one current version

A file name is the only label most documents ever get, and the person who saves a file names it for the moment. The scanner calls it scan0001. The associate calls her second pass at a letter FINAL2. Six months later, neither name says what the document is, when it was made, or whether it went out.

A naming convention makes the name carry those answers. Put the date first, written year, month, day, so a folder sorts itself in order: 2026-02-17 lands ahead of 2026-03-20 in any file listing. Then the kind of document, a short description, and a version marker if it is a draft. Which rule a firm picks matters less than whether everyone follows it.

Versions are the harder problem. A demand letter goes through three drafts, and all three sit in the folder under plausible names. A document management system handles this with version control: each save becomes a numbered version of one document, and the system marks which version is current. A shared drive has no such memory, so the naming convention has to carry it. Even then, the name cannot tell you which draft went out. Often another document can. An insurer’s reply that quotes the demand’s date and amount tells you which draft the insurer received.

Whose servers hold the file

A practice management system is cloud storage. The firm’s files sit on the vendor’s servers, and the firm reaches them through a browser. Florida allows it, on conditions. Rule 4-1.6(e) requires a lawyer to make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access to client information, and to prevent its inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure. The rule’s comment says a breach is not a violation if those efforts were reasonable, and it lists what decides that. The factors include how sensitive the information is, how likely a disclosure is without more safeguards, and what those safeguards would cost and complicate.

Ethics Opinion 12-3 (opens in a new tab) applies that duty to the cloud. A lawyer may keep client files with a provider after researching it. Does the provider have an enforceable duty to keep the data confidential, and will it tell the lawyer if a subpoena demands the files? How does it secure the data? Can the lawyer reach every file and keep others out? What happens to the data when the contract ends? The comment to Rule 4-5.3 treats an internet service that stores client information as help from outside the firm. The lawyer must make reasonable efforts to keep that help in line with the lawyer’s own duties. In 2024, Opinion 24-1 carried the same questions over to generative AI tools, which can also take in client information and keep it.

The duty does not end when the firm picks a vendor. Inside the system, the firm decides who can see what. A document filed in the wrong matter is visible to everyone who can open that matter. In a system with a client portal, that can include the client.

What the file lets you tell the client

The client portal is the part of the file the client sees. Messages there save to the matter, so the firm’s account of what it told the client is written down as it happens. Rule 4-1.4(a) is why that account matters. A lawyer must keep the client reasonably informed about the status of the matter and promptly comply with reasonable requests for information. A client who has heard nothing since the complaint was filed has reason to ask, even when the case is moving.

Much of that informing falls to staff. A paralegal can send the client the facts: what was filed and when, what the other side has asked for, which dates are open for her deposition, and what she needs to sign. What the facts mean for her is another matter. Whether to accept an offer, whether her case is strong, how to answer questions about an old injury: those call for legal advice, and Rule 4-1.4(b) puts the explaining on the lawyer. When an offer does arrive, the comment to Rule 4-1.4 ordinarily has the lawyer tell the client its substance promptly, and Rule 4-1.2(a) makes the decision whether to settle the client’s own.

The line runs through single sentences. “The insurance company declined our demand in March” is a fact. “Don’t worry, insurers always say no at first” is a prediction, and the client will hear it as the firm’s view of her case. A good update carries the facts, asks for what the firm needs from the client, and says plainly who will call her about the rest.

What goes back, what stays, and for how long

When the case ends, the file splits. Some of it goes back to the client, some stays with the firm for a set time, and some can go at once. Florida starts from a rule that, as the Bar’s ethics committee once observed, many lawyers do not know: the file a lawyer builds is the lawyer’s property. The Fifth District, which hears Daytona Beach’s appeals, said so in Dowda & Fields, P.A. v. Cobb (opens in a new tab). A trial court had ordered a discharged firm to deliver its office file to the client’s new lawyer. The appellate court reversed. Nothing showed that the file held any property of the client, and no one had said why the new lawyer needed it.

The same opinion marks the limits. A lawyer’s file may hold the client’s own papers and property, and information the next lawyer should have. Rule 4-1.16(d) requires a lawyer at the end of a representation to surrender the papers and property the client is entitled to, and Ethics Opinion 88-11 (Reconsideration) (opens in a new tab) sorts the rest of the client’s file. The client’s own property comes back, above all original documents of value that she handed over. The firm should consider giving her copies of court filings, signed documents prepared for her use, discovery she paid for, and correspondence she needs to protect her interests. She is generally not entitled to the firm’s internal notes, its conflict checks, its drafts, or another client’s confidential information. The opinion limits the firm’s leverage, too. In a contingency fee case, a firm may not hold the file for its fee until the contingency occurs. If repaying costs also depends on the outcome, it may not hold the file for costs either.

How long the rest stays is mostly the firm’s call, because Florida sets no general retention period for a closed file. Two rules set six years for records that a personal injury case produces when it ends in a recovery. Rule 5-1.2(f) keeps the trust records six years after the representation ends. Rule 4-1.5(f)(5) keeps the contingency fee contract and closing statement six years after the closing statement is signed. For everything else, the Bar’s ethics committee has declined to set a number. Its answer in Opinion 81-8 went to a young lawyer with a terminal diagnosis. He wanted to destroy the files of clients who had not answered his letter within 90 days. The committee said no: each unanswered file had to be reviewed, and destroyed only once he was satisfied it held no important papers of the client’s. In its words, “the contents of the file, not its date,” decide how long a file is kept. The Bar’s practice staff advise explaining the firm’s retention period when the client signs on, so the letter at the end surprises no one.

The last question is the form the file takes. Opinion 06-1 lets a firm keep an electronic file with no paper behind it. The exceptions are three: a statute or rule requires the original, the original belongs to the client, or destroying the paper would hurt the client’s interests. A scan of a client’s receipt can live in the file, and the receipt goes back to her. The electronic copy must stay readable, and safe from accidental change or loss, for as long as the firm keeps it. One more lesson sits in 06-1’s own citations. It cites the six-year rules as Rules 4-1.5(f)(4) and 5-1.2(d), and those subdivisions have since moved to 4-1.5(f)(5) and 5-1.2(f). The Bar’s Closed Files packet (opens in a new tab) prints both opinions with a model retention policy. Read any opinion against the current rules.

Back to the Zubieta file

The activity hands you all of this in the state a busy firm leaves it. There are twenty files with names like scan0001 and FINAL2, and nine emails no one saved to the matter. Start the way this reading did, with the fields, and write your naming rule before you rename anything. Some answers sit in documents whose names hide them, so open every file. When you write to Maria Zubieta, send her facts from the record and leave their meaning to Kim Nguyen. When you plan the close, put each item where the rules put it: back to her, kept for a set time, or gone.