Daily Operations

Daily Operations

The standard operating procedures for intake, conflict checking, matters, the docket, deadline verification, tasks and documents — in the order the work actually flows.

SOP 1 — Intake & conflict check

1. Open an intake (Law Office → Intakes → Add). Intakes are confidential: only you (the creator), the intended lead attorney, and users holding a conflict/decision permission can see it.
2. Build the party list on the intake workspace: the prospective client, adverse parties, and any other names that matter. These rows join the firm's permanent conflict corpus — even if the intake is later declined or withdrawn.
3. Run the conflict search (Conflict Check tab → Run Search). The engine searches every registered party, alias, and past intake party using four passes: exact, partial, token-level (so “Gerardo Yap” finds “Gerardo M. Yap”), and phonetic (so “Lym” finds “Lim”). Each hit shows the matched name and the person's frozen matter involvement at the time of the search.
4. Record the disposition. A permitted lawyer reviews the hits and records one of: Cleared, Cleared with Waiver, Conflict — Declined, or Escalated — with a mandatory written rationale. Dispositions can never be edited or deleted; a new one supersedes by being latest.
5. Decide. Acceptance is blocked until the latest disposition is Cleared / Cleared with Waiver. Accepting opens a matter, carries matched parties over with their roles, and links the intake to it. Declining keeps the intake (and its corpus rows) permanently.

SOP 2 — Running a matter

The matter workspace has eight tabs: Overview (profile, next verified deadline), Parties (roles: client, adverse, counsel, witness…), Team (the staffing roster — and the access list when restricted), Docket, Deadlines, Tasks, Documents, Activity (the full timeline of every change).

• Status moves Active ⇄ On Hold → Closed → Archived, always through the status dialog. Closing is blocked while the matter still has open (draft or verified) deadlines.
• Restricted matters show a lock badge. Only the team, the lead, the creator, and holders of the firm-wide restricted-view permission can see them anywhere — lists, calendar, reports, widgets, APIs. Every permitted view of a restricted matter is access-logged.

SOP 3 — Docket & deadline verification (the malpractice shield)

1. Docket events (hearings, conferences, filings, appointments) are scheduled on the Docket hub's calendar or a matter's Docket tab, with date/time/location/assignee, and are completed or cancelled with outcome notes.
2. Anyone with docket-manage may DRAFT a deadline — title, rule basis (e.g. “Rule 18, Sec. 6”), trigger, due date, assignee. Drafts are clearly labeled advisory and are NOT firm-trusted.
3. A permitted lawyer VERIFIES the draft from the Verify Queue: confirms the date against the source (optionally citing an uploaded source document), and writes a verification note. From that moment the deadline is immutable.
4. Corrections supersede. A verified deadline is never edited: create the corrected deadline, then supersede the old one — the chain (old → new) is preserved forever.
5. Reminders are automatic. The daily sweep reminds the assignee (or the matter lead) at the configured ladder offsets, flags overdue verified deadlines, and nags about drafts stuck unverified for 3+ days.

SOP 4 — Tasks

• Add tasks on the matter's Tasks tab: status (To Do / In Progress / Done / Cancelled), priority, assignee, due date, and optionally the docket deadline the task is working toward.
• Assigning a task notifies the assignee (bell + email, per their notification preferences).
• The ✓ button completes a task in place and writes it to the matter timeline.

SOP 5 — Documents

• Upload on the matter's (or intake's) Documents tab: title, category (Pleading, Court Order, Evidence, Contract, Correspondence, Identification, Engagement Letter, Other), description, and the file.
• Tick Source document on a matter document that can serve as verification evidence — it then appears in the deadline verify dialog's citation dropdown.
• Download resolves through the firm's storage transparently (local disk or S3 signed URL). Deleting removes the stored file and archives the record — both are audit-logged.

Where to watch the firm

• Command Center — visibility-scoped KPIs (open matters, deadlines in 14 days, intakes in conflict check, verify-queue size), the action queue, upcoming verified deadlines, recent activity.
• Dashboard widgets — add Law Office — Upcoming Deadlines / My Tasks / Intake Pipeline / Matters by Status to any ERPat dashboard.
• Reports — Matter Portfolio, Intake Funnel (with acceptance rate), Deadline Compliance by month.

ERPat Law Office module documentation · Daily Operations.