Documents and Disposal
When a record is disposed of under a retention schedule, its documents go with it — with two deliberate exceptions.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Data. Retention schedules and legal holds are documented under Case Management → Retention & Legal Hold; this is what that disposal does to documents.
What goes
The link between the document and the disposed record always goes. Where that was the document’s last link, the document itself goes too: its versions, its files, and its sidecars — control, ownership, acknowledgements, access log, library column values, watches and extracted text.
What survives, and why
A document attached to three cases, one of which is disposed of, keeps the other two. It is the same file, and the other cases have not reached the end of their own retention.
That is the union rule working in the other direction, and it is the reason disposal removes a link rather than a document.
A file store document is not destroyed
The second exception, and the one to disagree with if you are going to disagree with any of this. A document adopted from a file store points at bytes that belong to a separate library with its own lifecycle, which other people are still browsing.
Disposal removes the document — its ledger rows, versions and sidecars — and leaves the file in the store. Deleting a file out from under a library that never agreed to this retention schedule, on the strength of one adoption, would be worse.
The certificate gets a count
A destruction certificate records how many document rows were removed rather than naming each one. Each destroyed document is written to the system log with its title, filename and size before it goes, so the detail exists — it is simply not in the certificate.
A missing file is not a failure
On an estate of any age, plenty of file rows point at objects that are no longer in storage. Disposal removes the record either way rather than refusing, because a disposal that will not complete because the thing was already gone is not a useful disposal.
Worked example
A closed case reaches the end of its schedule. Four of its five documents are on no other case and are destroyed with it; the fifth is a shared site survey on two live cases and only its link goes. The certificate records five dependants removed, and the survey is still there where the other cases expect it.
Recommendations
- Check what else a document is on before assuming disposal will destroy it.
- Do not rely on disposal to clear a file store — it deliberately will not.
- Keep the system log if you need per-document evidence of destruction.