A conflict check before every new matter
Most conflicts are found in the first five minutes of taking a matter on, or not at all. How a firm can make the check routine rather than a memory test.
The Dangana team · 10 September 2026 · 1 min read
Why the check comes first
A conflict of interest discovered halfway through a matter is expensive: the firm may have to stop acting, the client has to find new lawyers, and information already received cannot be unlearned. The same conflict found before the matter opens costs a short conversation.
In a small firm the check often lives in the managing partner's memory. That works until the firm grows, a partner is away, or a company comes back under a new name.
What to search for
A useful check looks for more than the client's own name:
- the client, including earlier names and the people behind a company;
- the other side and anyone connected to them;
- related parties such as guarantors, directors and beneficial owners;
- matters the firm acted on in the past, not only the open ones.
Names are rarely spelled the same way twice, so the search has to find near matches as well as exact ones.
Making it routine
In Dangana a new matter cannot open until its conflict check is decided. The check runs across every party the firm has on file, open and closed matters alike, and lists what it found. A partner decides each result, clears the matter or declines it, and the decision is kept with the matter for good.
Where the firm acts despite a connection, with the consent the rules require, the reason is recorded, and an ethical wall can keep the people on one side away from the other matter's records.
The record afterwards
The value of the check is not only in the answer on the day. Months later, when someone asks why the firm took the matter on, the check, its results and the partner's decision are all on the matter's record, with who decided and when.