Legal Entities module guide

This Legal Entities module guide covers the record Lextree keeps for each company, subsidiary, or other legal entity your organization owns — its formation, the jurisdictions where it’s registered, its governance documents and owner actions, and the filings that keep it in good standing. Each legal entity ties to an organization record, and its regulatory profile stays connected to any matter that names it as a party, tracked in Matters.

The Legal Entities List and Record

The Legal Entities List

Open Legal Entities from the left navigation to see every entity you can access. The list shows these columns:

Use the filter row beneath the headers to narrow the list by any column. The header also has a What’s inside button that explains what the module tracks, plus an Export button, available once at least one record is selected, on every plan.

Creating a Legal Entity

Creating a legal entity requires Editor access to the Legal Entities module.

1. From the Legal Entities list, click New.
2. In the New Legal Entity panel, choose the Organization — or click + New to create it without leaving the form.
3. Set the Legal Jurisdiction & Form, and fill in the optional Formation date, Tax ID, Fiscal year end, and Notes.
4. Click Save. Lextree opens the new entity’s record page.

The record page’s header has Edit, Delete, and What’s inside buttons. Below the core details, the record page has expandable sections for everything that hangs off the entity — expand any section to view, add, or edit its items.

Registrations and Their Filings

Each registration records where the entity is registered to do business. An entity formed in one state and qualified in several others has a registration for each jurisdiction.

Filing Obligations and Filings

A registration’s periodic reporting is a two-level record: a Business Registration Periodic Filing Obligation is the standing requirement — what must be filed and how often, such as an annual report or a beneficial ownership report — and each Business Registration Periodic Filing is the dated instance made under it for a single reporting period.

Agents and Service Logs

The Registered Agent is the agent of record in that jurisdiction. Each document the agent receives on the entity’s behalf — a summons, subpoena, or official notice — gets its own Registered Agent Service of Process Log row, recording what was served and who it was forwarded to.

Certificates and Names

A Business Registration Status Certificate records a certificate of good standing or similar evidence. A Business Registration Trade Name records a DBA or assumed name filed under the registration’s jurisdiction. A Business Registration Jurisdictional Filing records an amendment, conversion, or dissolution filing made under the registration.

Each of these carries its own Attachments, Events, and Workflows, so you can attach a filed document, set its reminder, and run its checklist right on the record itself.

Governance Documents and Owner Actions

Governance Documents

Formation and lifecycle documents that govern the entity — articles, bylaws, operating agreements, and their amendments — with each amendment tracked as its own row under the document it changes.

Entity-level policies and financial-statement tracking now live in their own modules — see Policies and Financial Statements for how those document registers work.

Owner Actions

An Owner Action records a formal act of the entity’s owner group — a written consent signed by shareholders, members, or partners in lieu of a meeting, or the minutes of an owners’ meeting. Each signature line is its own Owner Action Signatory row, recording who signed, in what capacity, and when.

Who Can Access Legal Entities

• Viewing legal entities requires access to the Legal Entities module.
• Creating a legal entity requires Editor access to the Legal Entities module.
• Editing an existing legal entity is also open to Editor users in any other module that shares the same organization. So someone who manages that organization’s taxes or contracts can correct its entity details.

On Enterprise plans, access group scoping limits the list to entities within your assigned access groups.