Contacts

Modified on Mon, 06 Feb 2023 at 07:12 PM

In this article, you will learn more about contact records and the different types of information they contain.

In Actionstep everyone you deal with at your firm can be added as a contact whether that be your clients, your suppliers, your contacts at other law firms, government bodies, etc.

In some legal practice management systems, you create contacts within your matters or files. However, in Actionstep this works a little bit differently and our contacts are added to our matters or files. So each individual or entity has its own contact card which is then added to a matter or file. 

 

Difference between Individuals and Companies

A contact can either be an individual or a company. 

 

Create contact screen - individual/compant dropdown

 

A company does not only include Companies (as in the "legal definition") of the word it includes any non-individual contacts you deal with in your organization; so, government bodies, charitable bodies, trusts, etc. You can change the terminology used (if you do not want to use the word company, please discuss this with Administrator and/or your Certified Consulting Partner). 

 

Adding contacts to a matter

If you are acting for Mr. and Mrs. Smith in relation to a transaction, you will create two contacts. One for Mr. Smith and one for Mrs. Smith, and then add them both in the matter under Client as you are representing both of them.

 

Parties tab on a matter

 

 

Terminology

There are a lot of different terminologies that we hear in relation to contacts and these are as below:


TerminologyWhat it means?
ContactA contact is anyone who you contact in relation to any aspect of your business. They may not be involved in any matters but you want to save down their contact details. 
Party(ies)A party is a contact added to a matter in a specified "role". For example, Sally Jones and Michael Jones above are parties on the matter and they have been added as "Clients".
Primary Participant

The Primary Participant of a matter is useful as it displays the participant's contact information at the top-right of the matter.

A matter with the primary participant circled

It can be identified in the 'Parties' list by looking for the star next to the participant type. It would usually be set to the client/customer in most instances.

Parties screen with an arrow pointing at the asterisk indicating the primary participant



 

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