How long should a law firm keep client files?

Why there isn’t one answer

No statute tells a firm how long to keep a closed client file. It’s a judgement your firm makes and writes down in a retention policy, so that everyone treats the same kind of file the same way.

This guide is general information about the law in England and Wales, not legal advice. Your regulator, your insurer and the kind of work you do all bear on the answer, and the final call is your firm’s.

The limitation periods to start from

The main reason to keep a file after the matter closes is to be able to answer a claim. The Limitation Act 1980 sets how long someone has to bring one, and its periods are the natural place to begin:

• Six years from when the cause of action accrued, for a claim in contract (section 5) or in tort, which covers most negligence claims (section 2).
• Twelve years for an action on a specialty, such as a document executed as a deed (section 8).
• A fifteen-year long stop for most negligence claims, counted from the act or omission the claim is about, however late the damage comes to light (section 14B).

Where the claim is based on fraud, or a relevant fact was deliberately concealed, the period doesn’t begin to run until the claimant discovers it or could reasonably have done so (section 32).

Files that deserve longer

A period counted from the day the matter closed suits most files. Some work stays live for much longer, and it’s worth giving it a period of its own:

• Original wills and deeds you look after for a client, which usually stay with you until the client or their estate asks for them.
• Files for a client who was a child, or who lacked capacity to conduct proceedings, when the claim arose. The Act treats them as under a disability (section 38), and they have six years from when that ends (section 28).
• Conveyancing and trust files, where a question can come up years later, when the property is sold again or the trust comes to an end.
• Any file where a complaint, a claim or a regulator’s question is already open, which will need to stay, whatever the policy says, until it’s resolved.

Personal data pulls the other way

Keeping everything forever isn’t the answer either. Client files are full of personal data, and UK GDPR says personal data shouldn’t stay in a form that identifies people for longer than is necessary for the purposes it’s used for.

A written period is what lets you explain why you still have a file, and when it’s due to go.

Writing the policy down

A retention policy for client files doesn’t need to be long. For each kind of file, it should say:

• what the file is, in words a new trainee would recognise
• how long it stays, and the event the period counts from, such as the day the matter closed
• who can agree to it going early, and who decides when something should be set aside for a dispute
• what happens at the end: whether the file is destroyed, returned to the client or reviewed first

Look at the policy again each year, and whenever the law or your insurer’s terms change. A short note of each decision makes it easy to show which version was in force on any date.

How folio will help

In folio, each kind of file will be a retention class with the period your firm has chosen, and everything on a matter will sit in one folder under the matter number.

When a claim arrives, you’ll be able to place a hold on the matter, and nothing in it will be disposed of until two people release it.

The law firms page shows how a day with folio will look.

Read next

• folio for law firms
• What is a legal hold, and how do you run one?
• How long each record will be kept