Assignment & Accountability

Every matter and every task in Laminar has exactly one assignee. It’s one of the simplest rules in the system, and one of the most consequential.

Why Single Assignment

In a small practice, accountability is informal: everyone knows who’s handling what because there are only a few people and a few files. At 20 staff and 300 active matters, informal accountability fails. “I thought you were handling that” becomes a daily occurrence, and tasks slip through cracks not because anyone is careless but because nobody was clearly responsible.

Single assignment eliminates the ambiguity. If a task is assigned to you, it’s yours: it’s in your list, it counts toward your workload, and if it’s overdue, it’s overdue on your record. Every ball has a name on it.

Assigning to Users and Teams

The most common assignment is to a person. Tasks created on a matter default to the matter’s assignee; you can hand them to anyone in your firm.

You can also assign work to a team: useful when you know which group should handle something but don’t need to pick the person yet. “Assign this title search to the Title Team” beats guessing who has capacity. The work sits in the team’s view, where the team lead typically hands it to a member when it’s time. If the team lead changes, existing team assignments stay with the team; responsibility follows the role, not the individual.

Matter Assignment vs. Task Assignment

The matter assignee owns the transaction as a whole: usually the lawyer or clerk who “owns” the file. Task assignees can differ per task. A matter assigned to Sarah might have its title search with Jake, its trust receipt with Maria, and its closing package with the Documents Team.

This is how work flows naturally: one owner for the deal, distributed ownership of the work inside it.

Responsible Lawyer

Matters have a second assignment field: the Responsible Lawyer, the lawyer professionally accountable for the transaction.

It’s separate from the assignee for a practical reason: in many firms, clerks and paralegals run the day-to-day while a supervising lawyer holds oversight. Two things hang off this field:

• Trust approvals: expenditures require approval from the Responsible Lawyer or one of their delegates.
• Professional accountability: when a regulatory body asks “who was the lawyer on this file?”, this is the answer.

Approval Delegates

For trust approvals, a Responsible Lawyer can name approval delegates: users authorized to approve expenditures on their behalf, either without limit or up to a dollar amount. Bob can approve up to $50,000; Carol up to $100,000; anything bigger waits for the lawyer personally.

Delegates are configured once in the firm’s settings and apply across all matters where that lawyer is Responsible Lawyer. This is a practical necessity: lawyers aren’t always available the moment a disbursement needs to go out, and a closing shouldn’t wait on a signature that a trusted delegate can provide. Work keeps moving; oversight stays intact.

Reassignment

Reassignment is a normal part of how work flows: vacations, shifting workloads, changing priorities. Change the assignee in the detail view and it takes effect immediately. The item moves to the new assignee’s list, scheduling is preserved, and the change is logged.

The Activity Record

Every assignment, reassignment, and delegated approval is logged in the activity timeline with who and when. That record is permanent. It’s your audit trail for accountability: who was responsible for what, and when ownership changed hands.