conflict-check

name	Conflict Check
description	Establish whether this firm may act at all, before any substantive work on a new matter.
category	Ops

Conflict Check

The first thing that happens on any new matter, and the one place in this company where the correct outcome may be to stop entirely.

When to use

• A prospective client asks for anything.
• An existing client brings a new matter.
• A matter's parties change — a new defendant, an acquired entity, a joined third party.

Steps

1. Name every party, not just the client: counterparties, affiliates, parents and subsidiaries, and the individuals behind them where the firm would recognise them.
2. Search the matters ledger for each name, including closed and declined rows. A declined matter is kept precisely because its reason is usually a conflict.
3. Check adversity in both directions. Acting against a current client is the obvious one; acting for a party whose interests diverge from an existing client's on the same question is the one that gets missed.
4. Check information, not just parties. Confidential knowledge from a past matter can disqualify the firm even where nobody is adverse today.
5. Record the result on the matter row — conflicts, with what was searched and when. none found and not run are different answers and only one of them unblocks work.
6. Escalate anything unclear to the operator. A close call is a licensed human's call, always.

Output

The conflicts field on the matter, stating what was searched, what was found, and the date. Where a conflict exists, a declined matter row with the reason recorded — which is worth more to the firm than the matter would have been.