Practice areas, matter types and custom fields

Practice areas

The firm starts with fifteen practice areas, from litigation and criminal law to conveyancing and corporate work. Rename, reorder, add or deactivate them under Settings, Practice areas.

Each area keeps its members and its heads of practice. A permission granted at practice area scope reaches the areas a person belongs to, so membership decides, for example, whose time a head of practice may see.

Matter types

Under each area sit the kinds of matter the firm opens, such as a land suit or a share transfer. A matter type sets what every matter of that kind starts with:

• Its default billing arrangement and workflow.
• The risk band its KYC starts at.
• Whether it may open before the conflict check is decided.
• Whether it carries a case record for court work.
• How many years its closed file is kept, or that it is kept indefinitely, as wills, deeds and titles are.

Custom fields

When the firm needs to record something the system does not ask for, add a custom field under Settings, Custom fields: for a kind of record, or for one matter type only. Choose its type (text, number, date, choice), whether it is required, its order and its help text. Dates and numbers stay searchable and sortable like any other field.