Tasks & Work Items

Tasks are the individual units of work in Laminar. If matters track the big picture (“where is this deal?”), tasks track the actual doing (“what needs to happen next?”).

What a Task Is

A task is a single, assignable piece of work. “Order title search.” “Request mortgage payout statement.” “Review survey.” Each one has an owner, a status, and optionally a scheduled date.

Every task lives inside a matter, and you can see a matter’s tasks from its detail view. But day to day you’ll mostly meet tasks through My Tasks, which pulls together everything assigned to you across all your matters.

A task should be small and specific. “Handle everything for the Smith closing” is too big; break it into the actual steps. Each step is a task.

Task Workflows

Tasks have their own workflows, much simpler than matter workflows. The default task workflow is just Unresolved and Resolved: the work is either outstanding or it’s done. Typed work items can have richer workflows when the work warrants it.

Resolving a task removes it from your active list. It’s still recorded in the matter’s history; it’s just no longer taking up attention.

My Tasks: Your Daily Operating View

My Tasks shows every task assigned to you, in three views:

Ready is everything that needs your attention now: overdue tasks (past their scheduled date) and unscheduled tasks (no date set). Overdue items are highlighted.

Future is tasks scheduled for upcoming dates, staying out of your way until their day arrives.

Completed is what you’ve finished, in case you need to look something up.

The power of this view is that it’s honest: it shows what you actually need to deal with right now, not every open item across your caseload. Scheduling is what makes that possible. (See Scheduling Your Work.)

Work Items: The Broader Category

You’ll mostly say “task” day to day, but Laminar’s broader concept is the Work Item: any typed, trackable unit of work on a matter. Tasks are work items. Trust transactions are work items too.

The type is what unlocks the leverage:

Work Item Types categorize work. A task called “Order title search” with the type “Title Pull” becomes part of a recognized category, with its own workflow suited to that kind of work.

The Work Items view groups your work by type: “5 title pulls, 3 mortgage instructions, 8 document packages.” Batching similar work makes you faster, and seeing volumes by type is how a firm spots bottlenecks and staffs sensibly.

Types also power fulfillment: a typed work item can be routed to the specialized team that handles that kind of work.

Not every task needs a type. One-offs like “Call client back” work fine as plain tasks. Types are for the repeatable, structured work that benefits from being tracked in aggregate.

How Tasks Relate to Matters

Completing all the tasks in a stage doesn’t automatically advance the matter. Those are separate decisions, on purpose: you might finish every “Searches” task and still hold the matter because a search result looks off. Tasks provide the evidence; a person makes the call.

Creating Tasks

From within a matter: open the matter’s Tasks section and add one. It belongs to that matter and inherits the matter’s assignee by default.

From the Create button in the top bar: select “Task” and specify the matter.

Set a title, an assignee, and optionally a scheduled date and description. Keep titles action-oriented: “Order title search” beats “Title search.” The verb tells you what to do.

Assignment Rules

Every task has exactly one assignee: a user or a team.

Assigned to a user, it appears in their My Tasks list; they’re responsible for completing it. Assigned to a team, it sits in the team’s view until someone picks it up or the lead hands it to a member. Reassignment is normal and logged in the activity timeline.

Task Properties

Property	What It Does
Title	Short description of the work. Keep it action-oriented.
Status	Position in the task’s workflow (Unresolved, Resolved by default).
Assignee	Who’s responsible: a person or a team.
Matter	Which matter the task belongs to.
Scheduled date	When it should appear in the assignee’s Ready list. Optional.
Description	Longer instructions or context. Optional.
Work Item Type	Category of work (e.g., “Title Pull”). Optional.
Notes, Assets	Timestamped comments and file attachments.
Links	Relationships to other tasks: related, blocks, blocked by, duplicate.