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LegalBook

People, households and duplicates

The firm's directory of people and organizations, consent on contact methods, safety flags, restrictions, and finding and merging duplicates.

For: AttorneyStaff

On this page

Every person and organization the firm deals with lives once in the people directory: clients, prospects, family members, sponsors, employers, opposing parties, courts, agencies and vendors. Matters, calls, documents and invoices all point to the same person.

Open People, Organizations and Duplicates from the sidebar of the Production, Attorney or Firm workspace. Reception uses Contact search.

What a person record holds

  • Names: exactly one current legal name, plus aliases, prior and maiden names.
  • Citizenships, nationality and residence.
  • Contact methods (phone, email and others), each with its consent record. One method per kind can be preferred. A number shared by two people is marked as shared.
  • Addresses, kept as history. A new current address supersedes the old one; nothing is overwritten.
  • Identifiers such as an A-number or passport number. These are stored encrypted. Most people see only the last four digits; revealing the full value needs identifier permission and is audited.
  • Relationships (18 kinds, such as spouse, parent, employer or authorized representative), households and emergency contacts.

What you see of a person depends on your role. A receptionist sees the lookup view needed for a live call. External co-counsel sees only people on the matters they are assigned to.

Safety flags and restrictions

  • A safety flag records how to handle a person safely (for example an abusive caller or a threat). Who can see each flag is set per role, and a high-severity flag can restrict the whole record.
  • A protected address is hidden from everyone without safety permission.
  • A communication restriction limits contact: do not contact, time windows, channels or a court order. Lifting a court order needs an attorney or administrator.

A restricted person appears as a stub to anyone without restricted-person permission. Their name is not shown in lookups, relationships or search.

Duplicates

LegalBook scans for likely duplicates as people are added, and on a schedule. Each pair gets a score and the reasons it matched.

  1. Open Duplicates.
  2. Compare the two records side by side.
  3. Merge them, choosing which value to keep for each field, or dismiss the pair.

You need merge permission (senior case processors, case coordinators, attorneys and firm owners and administrators have it).

Reversing a merge

Every merge keeps what is needed to undo it. Open Merge history (the merges list), choose the merge and reverse it. Reversing a merge that involved a high-risk or restricted person needs one of the roles your firm named for that.