Matters and deadlines

A matter carries its participants, assignments, office, stage and a timeline of everything that happened to it. Sensitive matters can be restricted to attorneys, with access granted person by person.

A matter moves through a lifecycle (open, active, on hold, ready to close, closed, reopened or transferred), and closing, declining and withdrawing are attorney actions.

Facts live in one store per matter. A fact can be recorded by staff, proposed from a document, or come from a questionnaire answer, but it becomes canonical only when a person verifies it. When two sources disagree, LegalBook opens a discrepancy for someone to resolve instead of picking one.

Incoming notices go to a queue. Staff match each notice to its matter and verify it, and a verified notice can propose the deadline it creates. The deadline still waits for an attorney.

Deadlines are explicit or calculated from rules and holiday calendars. Either way, an attorney verifies each one before it counts, and reminders and at-risk flags follow from the verified date. The workflow never computes a filing deadline on its own authority.

A filing has a lifecycle: prepared, approved by an attorney, submitted with proof, and receipted. A receipt can publish a milestone to the client portal in client-safe language.

Attorney decisions are recorded on the matter with the review packet the attorney saw, and a decision can be linked to the workflow step it answers.