Contacts, intake, and cases
How a person or organization moves from an initial record into an active matter without losing the information already collected.
On this page
Before you start
- Access to the relevant contact, intake, and case areas.
Typical workflow
- 1
Search Contacts before creating a new person or organization.
- 2
Capture the prospective matter in Intake with its source, facts, assignments, and follow-up work.
- 3
Review the intake record and create a case when the firm accepts the matter.
- 4
Maintain the case header, team, phase, sections, activity, documents, deadlines, and relationships as the working record.
- 5
Review open work, final records, financial items, and retention requirements before closing or archiving the matter.
Find or create the contact
Contacts can represent a person or company and carry names, contact methods, addresses, identity and personal details, notes, and opportunity context. Search by contact, tag, or address before creating a record, and use duplicate review when possible matches need a side-by-side decision.
Triage the Intake Overview
Intake Overview summarizes current lead volume and organizes queues such as Assigned, Chase, Pending Signup, Recently Updated Leads, and Hold so staff can begin with the work requiring attention.
Capture and qualify a lead
A lead can carry contact and preferred-communication details, case type, incident date, marketing or referral source, office, likelihood, assignment, status, follow-up activity, related cases, and documents. Available fields follow the firm’s intake configuration.
Search and manage leads
Lead lists can be searched and narrowed by assignee, attorney, source, status, and other configured information. Filters can also become the starting point for a report when the team needs a repeatable review set.
Create the case
Case creation can begin directly or from an accepted lead. Confirm the case name, case type, parent matter when applicable, marketing source, linked lead or contact, and responsible team before opening the working matter.
Work in the matter workspace
A matter combines an editable header with configurable sections. Depending on case type and access, built-in work can include Documents, Intake Details, Activity Feed, Negotiation, Time & Billing, Team, Related Cases, Contacts, Calendar, and Vitals.
Maintain phase and matter status
The case header can carry matter identity, confidentiality, contact details, Phase, and Subphase. Phase changes should reflect the firm’s defined process, and archived matters should remain intentionally included or excluded from lists and reports.
Resolve and archive
Before closing or archiving a matter, review incomplete tasks and deadlines, final documents, communication history, signature activity, team assignments, financial items, related matters, and retention requirements.
Keep in mind
- Creating a case should carry forward approved intake and contact context instead of requiring staff to rebuild the record.