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Certified copies and the case file

Where the court copies on your matter live, how to read them online, and what “encrypted” means here.

Reviewed 24 September 2026

Step by step

  1. Open the matter, then the case file Every matter carries its own bundle. The papers that came from a court — orders, judgments, what was filed — are listed first, and a certified copy is marked.
  2. Advocates: add a paper and say what it is The scan, then six short questions: what kind of paper, how many pages, whether it is a certified copy, which court issued it, the date on it, and one line in your own words. The last is what the client reads before opening it.
  3. Clients: read it or download it Every paper opens in the browser. Nothing has to be requested, emailed or asked for — if it is on the file, it is yours to read.
  4. Check the fingerprint if it ever matters Each paper shows the first sixteen digits of the SHA-256 of the file as it was filed. It is how the copy you open in five years can be shown to be the copy that was filed today.
  5. See who has opened it Every open and every download is on the record, including the advocate's own. It is a record rather than a promise.

Worth knowing

  • A client can add papers to their own file and cannot remove one. Only the advocate running the matter can take a paper off it, and what went is written to the trail.
  • Uploading a scan does not replace a paper already on the file. A new scan is a new entry, so the fingerprint on an entry always belongs to the bytes filed under it.

Questions

Who can open the papers on my matter?
Only the people named on it — your advocate, you, and anybody either of you has added. Not other advocates, and not LegalNexus’s own administrators, who can see that the matter exists and cannot open its papers.
What does “encrypted” mean here?
Every document is sealed with AES-256-GCM before it reaches the disk, and decrypted only while it is being sent to one of those people. A copy of the disk, a stolen backup or a snapshot of the server is unreadable without the key, which is not stored with the files.
Is it end-to-end encrypted?
No, and the page says so. The server holds the key, because it has to hand you the file without asking you for a passphrase. It protects the documents from anyone who gets at the storage — not from someone holding both the storage and the server’s configuration.
How large a scan can be uploaded?
Twenty-five megabytes, which is a forty-page certified copy at a normal scan quality. The limit is named in the error if a file is over it.

Next

Case files: what goes in one Parties, court, stage, hearings, documents and the work log — and what the client sees of it. Your data, and taking it with you What is stored, what is encrypted, how to export it, and how to close the account.
All guides Reviewed 24 September 2026