An ethical wall is a collection of membership policies that prevent unwanted access to privileged client and matter information. Security policies are similar to membership policies, but can only restrict access to individual file parts.

Note the following when configuring membership and security policies:

• It's important to understand under what conditions a user should or shouldn't have access to records. Generally, it's better to not impose restrictions unless necessary, and to make records information as widely available as possible.

• Identify roles within the organization, determine the records each role needs access to, and the privileges included in the access levels. Typically, law firms have between three to five roles (systems administrator, records administrator, file clerk, legal secretary/paralegal, and attorneys).

• It's easier to manage roles/groups enterprise-wide than by office, as managing by office can cause an exponential increase in the number of groups, resulting in complexity of role management.

• Larger firms are more likely to have conflict of interests emerge, so it's important to ‌understand how conflicts are managed, who has access to what matters, how the access is managed, and whether an existing conflicts application exists. If it exists, determine if it can be used to drive membership and security policies.

• When implementing electronic records management, the application respects iManage Work security. So, if a user doesn't have access to a document in iManage Work, they don't have access to it in Records Manager.

For information on configuring membership and security policies, refer to Membership policies and Security Policies.