Automatic Document Processing

When you upload a PDF to a matter, Laminar doesn’t just store it. Inlet, the document-processing engine, reads it and, where it recognizes the document, extracts the data into the matter: contacts created, fields filled, relationships attached. The goal is simple: information your firm already received on paper shouldn’t need retyping.

Inlet is in early validation. Expect it to handle the common documents first (purchase agreements today) and grow from there.

Where to See It

Every matter has an Inlet Activity page in its sidebar: one row per document Inlet received. Each row names the document’s asset and what kind of document it was, says in one sentence what became of it (“Filled Residential Sale 12 Elm Street with 14 values”), and carries a badge: Filled, On the matter, 2 waiting, Choose a service, Reading, Could not read, Not read, or Nothing to add.

Click a row to open the document’s own page, which has the rest:

• How it went: five steps, Received, Recognised, Read, Filled and Done, with when each finished and how long it took.
• What happened to each value: how many were added, wait for you, were kept as recorded, or were read with no place for them yet.
• Every value, grouped into terms and money, dates, people, the land and the document itself, each marked Added, Waiting, Kept or Not used. A value that waits says why (the record already holds something else, it was read with low confidence, the name matches more than one contact), and one not used says why too (no service takes it yet, or it could not be recorded as read, like a date that is not on the calendar). Each person also says whether they were Already known or a New contact.
• A folded Technical history of the run’s own states, for when you want the detail.

The asset’s card and the matter’s activity feed open the same page.

Fill What Is Empty, Never Overwrite

Inlet writes a value only where nothing is recorded yet. It matches the people in a document to the matter’s contacts by name before it creates anyone. For a purchase agreement it fills the matter’s Residential Sale or Residential Purchase, whichever the matter holds, with the buyers and sellers on the right side of each; with neither on the matter yet, the parties, the dates and the property go onto the matter, and the rest fills in when you add the service. With two services that take the agreement, such as a sale and a purchase on one matter, it fills neither until you choose the one the agreement belongs to, from its page in Inlet Activity or from the service.

When It Waits for You

Some changes are yours to decide: a value that differs from what is recorded, a part of the document that was hard to read, a name that matches more than one contact, a role someone else already holds. Inlet writes everything else and leaves those waiting. Its row says how many wait (2 waiting), and the asset’s card counts them too. Open the review with Review on the document’s page, or from the service it fills, and for each change use the document’s value or keep what is recorded. What you keep is marked Kept.

What Triggers It

PDF uploads to a matter, and only those. Images, Word documents, and assets on tasks or trust transactions aren’t processed. PDFs that are password-protected, corrupt, or oversized show a “Not processed” note with the reason; the asset itself is always saved regardless.

The Right Level of Trust

Treat Inlet like a fast junior clerk: genuinely useful, always supervised. Data it writes is logged in the matter’s activity like any other change, so you can see exactly what came from a document. When a row says it filled values, open it and glance at them; when it says Not read, the document just isn’t one Inlet reads yet, and nothing was touched.