Legal document retention controls in your personal vault
The LegalDoc document vault holds your personal drafts and their exports. Its legal document retention controls let you set a retention period on each draft, 30 days by default, and delete a draft with its export files once you confirm. Shared team records follow different rules, covered below.
What the vault holds
The vault lists the personal drafts owned by your account and every export made from them.
- Drafts
- Every personal draft you create in the builder, through the AI assistant or with the NDA Agent, with its title, jurisdiction, status and last update.
- Search
- Filter by document title, template or jurisdiction.
- Reopen
- Open any draft in the builder to keep editing or export again.
- Exports
- Each PDF or DOCX export for a draft, with its status, a download link when complete, the link expiry and any failure reason.
Retention settings per document
Retention is set on each draft rather than across a workspace. Changing it moves that draft's retention date.
| Default period | 30 days, applied when a draft is created. |
|---|---|
| Change per document | One-click 7, 30 or 365 day settings in the vault. Stored periods can range from 1 to 3,650 days. |
| Retention date | Shown on each draft. Changing the period sets a new date counted from the moment you change it. |
| Scope | The draft and the export files created from it. |
How deletion works
Drafts leave the vault in one of two ways: you delete them, or scheduled deletion removes them after the retention date.
| Path | What happens | Exceptions |
|---|---|---|
| Manual deletion | Delete a draft from the vault after confirming "Delete this document and its exports? This cannot be undone." The draft and its export files are removed. | Refused while an export of that draft is still queued or processing. Wait for it to finish, then delete. |
| Scheduled deletion | When scheduled deletion is enabled for the service, an hourly job deletes drafts whose retention date has passed, together with their export files. | Drafts with an export in progress are skipped until it finishes. Failed deletions are recorded and retried. |
| Scheduled deletion paused | If scheduled deletion is paused, the vault shows a notice. Retention dates are still saved, but nothing is deleted automatically. | Manual deletion keeps working. |
Records the vault does not cover
Vault retention applies only to personal drafts and their exports. Other records have their own controls.
| Record | How it is handled |
|---|---|
| Contract review uploads and findings | Kept in your review library until you delete them there. Deleting a review removes the uploaded file and its findings. |
| Agent run history | Kept in run history until you delete a completed or failed run. Documents a run created stay in the vault. |
| Team agreements, versions, comments, approvals and signature records | Retained by the team workspace, separately from personal vault retention. Archiving is not deletion. |
| A shared copy of a personal draft | Independent of the original. Deleting or purging your personal draft does not remove the shared copy. |
For how LegalDoc handles personal data, including requests about team records, read the LegalDoc privacy notice. Team record handling is also described on the team workspaces page.
Questions about retention and deletion
How long does LegalDoc keep my drafts?
Each personal draft has its own retention period, 30 days by default. You can change it per document in the vault, or delete the draft at any time.
Does deleting a draft delete its exports?
Yes. Deleting a draft, manually or through scheduled deletion, also removes the PDF and DOCX export files created from it.
Do retention settings apply to my team's agreements?
No. Shared team records follow different retention. They are kept by the workspace, and archiving an agreement preserves its records.
Is the vault a records-management or legal hold system?
No. It manages personal drafts and their exports. It has no legal hold, disposition approval or organization-wide retention schedule.
Next: see how drafts are created with guided document assembly, check which plans include PDF and DOCX exports or book a demo.