Checklist · Confidentiality & client information
File retention and destruction schedule
Schedule for keeping, returning or destroying a closed plaintiff injury file, using the client-documents rule opened for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, and the separate privacy duty.
- Kind
- Checklist. Steps or checks to work through and tick off.
- Where it applies
- Australia, Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales
- AI use
- Yellow You and the tool draft together, with you directing. You check every statement you rely on.
- Law stated as at
- 23 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked on 23 October 2026 against the 5 authorities it cites, for 4 jurisdictions.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use when a plaintiff injury file is completed or the retainer ends, and again before any client document is destroyed. It does not replace the matter closure checklist. The lawyer marks every keep, return or destroy decision.
Used for these tasks
- Check whether client personal information must be destroyed or de-identified
- Close the personal injury file and decide what is returned, kept or destroyed
- Give the client their documents on request when the engagement ends unless an effective lien applies
Each task page says how far AI may help with the task and what the lawyer must review.
How AI may be used
The tool can lay out one row per closed file and repeat the rule that was opened for that state. The lawyer enters the dates, any instruction or legal obligation to keep the file, and the decision.
AI may
- Create a row from the matter number and the state the lawyer has named
- Repeat rule 14.2 as a permission to destroy after seven years, with the exceptions
- Keep APP 11.2 on its own row, separate from rule 14.2
AI must not
- Must not mark a file for destruction
- Must not treat seven years as a duty to keep the file, or as a date that is always long enough
- Must not add a health-records retention period, a trust-records period, or a period from an unopened section
- Must not use the commentary sentence that says the rule requires documents to be kept for seven years
The lawyer checks
- The completion or termination date is taken from the file, and the seven years are counted from that date only as the earliest day destruction is permitted
- Client instructions and any other legal obligation to keep the documents are recorded before a destroy mark
- APP 11.2 is considered on its own, including whether the information is still needed
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
Read the full text
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- read the whole precedent, with its drafting notes beside it;
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- add it to your firm’s knowledge base, so colleagues can find it;
- let the AI tools you connect read it from that knowledge base.
The summary, the law it rests on and the AI-use guidance above stay public. Privacy.
More in Confidentiality & client information
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- Collection notice for health information on a personal injury claim
- Information barrier protocol for one matter
- Waiver of a concurrent conflict of interest (United States)
- Data breach checklist for medical records
- Checklist before any file on a matter goes into a tool
- Staff and contractor AI confidentiality undertaking and acknowledgement
- Protocol before using a self-learning generative AI tool (United States)
- AI vendor confidentiality and privilege questions (short form of the vendor due-diligence questionnaire)
- Inventory of systems that can see client material
- Staff undertaking on unapproved generative AI tools (United States)
- Engagement clause: client authority for AI processing of confidential information (rider to the AI engagement clauses)
- Letter transferring a personal injury file to a new firm
- Comparison of a provider's terms on storage, training and subprocessors
- Check before using a hypothetical in a generative AI tool (United States)
- AI data incident steps (confidentiality short form of the AI incident response procedure)
- Confidentiality undertaking for an external reviewer or expert
All precedents for Confidentiality & client information · Tasks and AI use in this area