Managing Contacts

Contacts are the people and companies your firm deals with: clients, lenders, the other side’s firm. A contact is created once and linked to every matter it touches, so your repeat client has one record, one set of phone numbers, and a visible history of every deal you’ve done together.

Two Kinds of Contact

Individuals have first, middle, and last names, a suffix, and a preferred name (“what they go by”). Laminar computes the full legal name from the parts; you can override it when the legal name doesn’t follow the usual pattern.

Organizations have a name (“Royal Bank of Canada”), a nickname (“RBC”), and a full legal name.

Individuals can be linked to organizations (and vice versa), so “Sarah Chen at RBC” is one relationship, not a text note.

Emails and Phones

Contacts hold any number of email addresses and phone numbers, each with a type and one marked Primary. The primary email matters more than it looks: it’s the address used for portal invitations and questionnaires. Keep it current.

Adding a Contact to a Matter

From the matter’s Contacts section, click Add Contact:

Link Existing Contact searches your firm’s whole directory by name, email, or phone, and shows how many matters each result is already on. This is the right choice most of the time; if you’ve dealt with the person before, they’re in there.

Create New Contact makes a fresh record and links it in one step.

Either way you can assign a role on this matter: Client (the person you’re acting for) or Client Spokesperson (someone authorized to speak for them). Roles are per matter, so the same person can be the client on one deal and a spokesperson on another.

Avoiding Duplicates

While you’re creating a contact, Laminar checks for existing records with the same email or phone (high confidence) or a similar name (possible match) and shows them before you save. If the match is right, click Use This Contact and link the existing record instead of creating a twin.

Take the suggestion seriously. Duplicate contacts split the history: half the matters on one record, half on the other, and no one can see the whole relationship.

Removing a Contact from a Matter

Remove takes the contact off this matter: their roles go, documents shared with them on this matter are unshared, and their portal access to this matter is disabled. The contact itself stays in your firm’s directory with all its other matters intact.

The Firm Directory and My Contacts

Settings > Contacts is the firm-wide directory: every contact, searchable, with type and portal-status columns.

My Contacts (in the sidebar) is your personal shortlist: the realtors and lender reps you work with weekly. Adding someone there doesn’t copy them, and removing them doesn’t delete anything; it’s a bookmark list, private to you.