Tracking Matter Progress
Once a matter is open and work is underway, you need to keep track of where it stands. This guide covers monitoring your matters, spotting problems early, and advancing deals through their stages.
The Flows View
Section titled “The Flows View”Flows is your primary tool for tracking progress across your caseload: your matters arranged in columns by workflow stage, with counts showing how many sit at each point in the pipeline.
The counts tell you immediately where work is concentrated. If Searches has 5 matters and Closing has 1, you know where the bottleneck is.
Each card gives you a quick summary without opening the matter: the title, the assignee, the expected completion date, and a scheduling indicator showing whether the matter needs attention now. A card that’s been sitting in the same column for a while is worth investigating: the work is blocked, the assignee is overloaded, or the matter needs advancing.
Advancing a Matter
Section titled “Advancing a Matter”When you’re confident a matter is ready for the next stage, open it and change its workflow status. The move is immediate and Flows updates in real time.
When to advance is a judgment call; the system enforces no checklist. The signals:
Task completion. The current stage’s tasks being done is a strong indicator, but not sufficient on its own. If the title search came back with an issue, hold the matter even though the ordering task is complete.
External triggers. Conditions met, mortgage approved, closing date set. When the real-world milestone happens, advance the matter.
Professional judgment. Sometimes you just know a deal is ready. That instinct is valid, and it’s exactly why Laminar doesn’t automate stage transitions.
Spotting Stuck Matters
Section titled “Spotting Stuck Matters”Long residence time. Two weeks in “Searches” when searches take five business days means something is wrong. The card sitting in the same column day after day is the signal; you don’t need a report.
Overdue tasks. Open the matter and look at its tasks. Several overdue usually means the underlying work isn’t getting done. Figure out why: overload, a blocker, or an external dependency.
No recent activity. If the activity timeline shows nothing for a week on an active matter, it’s stagnating. Someone needs to poke it.
Expected completion approaching. A matter still in an early stage with its completion date closing in is a red flag worth chasing now, not next week.
The Matter Detail View
Section titled “The Matter Detail View”For a deeper look, click into the matter from Flows or search for it with Cmd+K. You’ll find the workflow status and stage progression at the top, then the full picture: tasks by status, contacts and roles, the trust ledger, notes, and the complete activity trail.
Habits That Keep You on Top
Section titled “Habits That Keep You on Top”Scan Flows daily, even for 30 seconds. You’re looking for stuck cards, crowding columns, and approaching completion dates.
Use the context selector. If you manage a team, switch context from “Me” to the team to see everything your people are carrying in one picture: team-assigned matters plus each member’s own. Details in Switching Context.
Act on stuck matters quickly. A phone call this afternoon beats a scramble next week.
Advance matters promptly. Leaving deals in stages they’ve outgrown muddies the view. Flows is only useful if it reflects reality.
What Good Looks Like
Section titled “What Good Looks Like”Matters flow through stages at a predictable pace, with a healthy spread from early pipeline to approaching close. Tasks get scheduled, worked, and completed on a rhythm; nobody is silently ignoring 30 overdue items. Notes capture context at key moments. And the activity timeline on each matter tells a story clear enough that you could hand the file to a colleague tomorrow and they’d know exactly where things stand.
Not perfection. Just a system that keeps you informed without heroic effort.