Setting Up a New Matter

This guide walks through creating a new matter, from clicking the button to having a workable file ready for your team.

Creating the Matter

Click Create in the top bar and select Matter. You’ll provide:

Workflow: What type of transaction is this? The workflow (e.g., “Residential Purchase,” “Residential Sale”) determines the stages the matter will move through, and it can’t be changed later.

Title: A descriptive, scannable name: “Purchase of 123 Main St” or “Refinance, Doe, Jane & John.” You’ll see it in lists and search results constantly; if you create 20 matters a week, clear titles pay for themselves daily.

The matter is created as soon as you submit, starting in the first stage of its workflow, assigned to you. If someone else will run it, reassign it from the matter detail view.

Setting Key Dates

From the matter’s Events section, set the dates that anchor the file: the expected completion date, and later the closing date and any deadlines. The expected completion date shows on the matter with the number of business days remaining, which helps with workload planning and spotting matters that are running behind.

Adding Services

Add the services that describe what the firm is doing. Common patterns:

• Buying a home: “Purchase Representation”
• Buying and discharging an old mortgage: “Purchase Representation” + “Mortgage Discharge”
• Selling: “Sale Representation”
• Refinancing: “Mortgage Refinance”

Services can be added or removed as the deal evolves. Client came in for a purchase but now needs a discharge too? Add the service. No second matter needed.

Adding Contacts

From the matter’s Contacts section, add the people involved. Contacts carry a role on the matter:

• Client: the person you’re acting for. Jane Doe, buying the house.
• Client Spokesperson: someone authorized to speak for the client, like the daughter coordinating her parents’ sale.

If the contact already exists in your firm’s system, search for them and link them; if they’re new, create the record with name, email, and phone. The same contact can appear across many matters, so your repeat client has one record linked to every deal you’ve done together.

Setting the Responsible Lawyer

Set the Responsible Lawyer on the matter: the lawyer with professional oversight, whose approval (or whose delegates’ approval) is needed for trust expenditures. In some firms this is the same person as the assignee; in clerk-driven firms the clerk is the assignee and the supervising lawyer is the Responsible Lawyer.

Creating Initial Tasks

From the matter’s Tasks section, add the work you know is coming:

• “Send engagement letter”
• “Request mortgage instructions”
• “Order title search”
• “Collect identification from client”

Keep titles action-oriented. Schedule anything that isn’t immediate for the date it becomes relevant: “Prepare statement of adjustments” isn’t a Day 1 task, so schedule it out and it stays out of your way.

Setting Up Trust Transactions

If the matter involves trust money (most real estate deals do), you can set up the expected picture early: a receipt for the buyer’s deposit, receipts for expected mortgage funds, expenditures for land transfer tax, title insurance, legal fees. Each needs a trust account, an amount, and a type. This doesn’t have to happen at creation; do it when you know the numbers. See Managing Trust Transactions.

The Matter Is Ready

At this point your matter has a workflow and starting stage, an assignee and Responsible Lawyer, key dates, contacts, services, and the immediate tasks scheduled. From here, daily work happens through tasks, and you advance the matter through stages as milestones are hit. The activity timeline accumulates the complete record from now until the deal closes.

Tips for High Volume

Develop a consistent setup routine. Five minutes of proper setup saves hours of confusion when you’re juggling 80 other files.

Don’t front-load every task. Create the immediate ones, schedule them, and add later work as the matter progresses.

Add services accurately. They drive downstream functionality (document templates, task generation, reporting). The 30 seconds pays off.