Titles and client engagements

Titles: who signs off

Every firm person carries a title that says what they do on clients, beside the firm role (member or firm admin) that says who manages the firm.

A law firm's titles are Partner, Associate and Paralegal; a preparer firm's one title is Preparer. Audit firms join with Core, after launch.

Partners and associates sign off client filings as signing counsel; paralegals never sign off. Preparers draft and tie out client filings; the client's own people send them to EDGAR.

Where the client turns on Can prepare filings, partners, associates and paralegals also prepare its Forms 3, 4 and 5 (off by default, on the firm's record sheet in Settings › People › Firms), and whoever prepared a form signs it off only when no other reviewer at the company could, with one more statement to tick; otherwise a colleague signs.

• Whoever creates the firm is its first firm admin, titled partner or preparer by the firm's type.
• A firm admin sets the title when inviting a colleague and changes it later with Change title in the roster row's menu, beside Make firm admin and Remove firm admin; the last firm admin cannot step down.
• The firm admin role is management only: a firm admin signs nothing unless titled partner or associate.

Who works on each client

When your firm holds an engagement on a client, its access decides which colleagues are seated there: Every member or Named members only (shown as Restricted on the Firm page).

• With Every member, every colleague is seated and what each may do follows their title.
• With Named members only, only the people a firm admin assigns in Manage access are seated. Each assigned person has a checkbox for the firm type's act (Sign off filings on a law firm); unticking it narrows that person on that client alone.
• A restricted client you are not assigned to is absent from your Practice; the firm admin sees every engagement.
• Lowering a title, or narrowing an assignment, ends the person's turn on any client filing in counsel review that waited on them; the client's admins are told and choose who signs off.
• The client can exclude one of your colleagues from their company; that person reads Excluded by the company on Manage access and only the client restores them.