Conflict Checks

The Conflict Checks section runs a real conflict screen on a lead or case (not a checkbox, a generated report) and records each check permanently, so you can show when you screened, whom you covered, and who signed off.

Who Gets Checked

A check automatically assembles everyone connected to the lead or case:

• the clients;
• the clients’ recorded relationships to other contacts (business-type ties pull that related person into the check too);
• every participant on the lead or case: opposing parties, judges, co-counsel, family participants.

Your own firm’s users are skipped: they’re staff, not conflict sources. The people covered are stamped on the check, which is what fills the Checked column back in Participants. A case also keeps credit for checks run while it was still a lead.

What the Report Contains

For each person checked, the report compiles what your firm already knows:

• their contact info: names, addresses, emails, phone numbers;
• their relationships to other contacts;
• every other lead or case they appear in, with their role in it;
• full-text matches on their name and contact details across notes, documents, and private comments firm-wide (documents include text, HTML, PDF, and Microsoft Office formats);
• matches in tasks, including calendar entries, and in private conversations;
• matches in intake and custom field answers.

In other words: if the firm has ever touched this person, the report surfaces it. The richer your Relationships and Participants data, the stronger this net is.

Sign-Offs

A check creates a sign-off row for every enabled user in a legal role. Each attorney reviews the report and records: conflict or no conflict, and if there is one, how it’s being handled (an ethical wall, a signed release) plus notes and the sign-off date. The two handling options mean different things:

• An ethical wall lets the firm take the case while walling the conflicted person off from it entirely. They get no access to the case and agree not to get involved in any way.
• A release is a written release from the client, who understands the conflict but wants the firm to continue and is fine with the conflicted person working on the case.

When you save the check, Outlaw sends each attorney a task to complete their sign-off, so the screening doesn’t stall in someone’s inbox. The decision to proceed, screen, or decline stays with you; the record of who decided what, and when, stays with the case.

And if a later edit of the check turns up a conflict that wasn’t there before, Outlaw sends warning tasks about the newly surfaced conflict. A new problem never sits silently in a saved record.

When to Run It

Run the first check before the initial client meeting, while you can still decline cleanly if a conflict surfaces. The screen is only as good as the information you’ve entered, so fill in as many participants and relationships as you can first: a check run on an empty lead returns nothing useful.

After that, people join a case over its whole life: a new opposing party, a newly discovered relationship. Participants added after the last check show an X in their Checked column, which is your cue to run a new check. Each check is a permanent record, so re-running adds to the history rather than overwriting it.

The Client File

Conflict-check records are the firm’s own risk-management documentation. Under the usual professional-responsibility rules they are administrative records, not part of the client’s case file, and they are never shown in the client portal.

Where You’ll See It

Conflict Checks appears on a lead and a case.