Legal · overview of the law firm module

The Legal vertical turns SellioCRM into a law firm's system: every matter sits behind an ethical wall that only assigned people cross, the conflict check sweeps the entire firm before you take on a case and returns metadata only, deadlines are counted against the holidays of the jurisdiction, fees are calculated by arrangement, and client money lives in a trust account that can never go negative. It is optional and ships turned off.

What the Legal vertical does

A law firm is not a company that sells: it is a company that keeps secrets. The rule that governs the day is not the sales quota, it is the duty of confidentiality, the conflict of interest and the deadline that cannot be missed. The Legal vertical brings those rules inside the CRM instead of leaving them in people's heads.

It adds the matter, also called the case, as the center of everything. Around the matter sit the parties, the deadlines, the fees, the time worked, the invoices and the documents. And around the matter sits the ethical wall, which decides who even knows the matter exists.

The rest of SellioCRM keeps working normally. Contacts, companies, activities, reports and the assistant do not change. The vertical adds the Legal screen and the rules a firm lives by.

How to enable it

1. Open Legal in the side menu.
2. If the vertical is off, the screen says so and shows the Enable Legal button.
3. Click Enable Legal. Only workspace administrators can do it; everyone else sees a message saying that only administrators can enable the vertical.
4. Create your first matter in the Matters block on the left.

The five pillars

The five pillars below are not loose features: they lean on one another. The ethical wall defines who sees what; the conflict check has to see past it in order to work, which is why it returns metadata only; deadlines and invoices inherit the wall, so you only ever see what belongs to your own matters. Understanding that order clears up most questions about how the module is used.

• Ethical wall: every matter has a list of assigned people. Anyone not on it does not see the matter, does not find it in search and does not know it exists. Not even a system administrator crosses it.
• Conflict check: before you take on a case, the system sweeps the parties of every matter in the firm looking for the same person or company, including matters you cannot see, and returns only the risk level and who to escalate to.
• Deadlines: the due date is calculated, not typed, counting business days or calendar days, using the holidays of the matter's jurisdiction and flagging hard deadlines.
• Fees, time and invoices: five fee arrangements, billable time entry, and an invoice that becomes immutable once it is finalized.
• Documents: every document on the matter keeps its versions and can be marked as privileged.

How the screen is laid out

The Legal screen has a left column with the list of Matters and the New matter form, and an area on the right with the selected matter. Above it, the Conflict check is always within reach, because it is used before the matter even exists.

Inside the selected matter there are six tabs: Parties, Deadlines, Fees, Time, Invoices and Documents. Each one has its own article in this area of the Help Center.

Creating a matter

1. In the Matters block, fill in the Matter title.
2. Enter the Matter number, when there is one.
3. Enter the Jurisdiction. It is what determines which holidays apply when the deadlines on that matter are calculated.
4. Enter the Practice area, for example labor, tax or corporate.
5. Click New matter.

Whoever creates the matter is automatically placed inside its ethical wall, otherwise they could not reopen their own matter a minute later. If a responsible attorney other than the creator is assigned, they go in too. Nobody else gets in on their own.

Client money is handled separately

SellioCRM keeps what belongs to the firm apart from what belongs to the client. Funds received in trust sit in a per-client account under strict rules: the balance can never go negative, one client's money never pays another client's bill, and a transfer into the firm's own account only happens against an invoice. Those rules are described in the article on fees and the client trust account.

Permissions and limits

• Enabling the vertical requires an administrator role.
• Being in your workspace grants access to no matter at all. Access is matter by matter, by assignment.
• Opening a matter leaves a record of who opened it and when.
• Granting emergency access to a matter requires a written justification, expires after a set period and is logged.
• The conflict check never returns the name of the conflicting party or the content of the matter, only the metadata needed to escalate.
• A finalized invoice can no longer be changed.

Frequently asked questions

• I am an administrator and I cannot see a matter. That is the correct behavior. The ethical wall has no exception for seniority; access is by assignment.
• Does disabling the vertical delete the matters? No. Disabling hides the screen and refuses the queries; the data stays stored and comes back when you enable it again.
• Can I use the module in more than one country? Yes. Nothing is hardwired to a single country: party identifiers are free text, holidays come from the jurisdiction chosen on each matter, and amounts carry their own currency.
• Does the conflict check see matters I am not allowed to see? Yes, deliberately. If it only looked at what you can see, a real conflict would slip through. What it never does is show you the content of those matters.
• Where do time entries live? On the Time tab of each matter, and they feed the invoice automatically.

Open this article inside the system →