Matters and people
The single thread of an engagement, and the humans on it.
The matter
A matter is the engagement itself — one thread from first inquiry to closing. It carries the stage, the people involved, the intake record, documents, appointments, invoices, files, and the full activity history. There is no separate "lead" object that later becomes a "client" file; the matter that entered at Contact is the same matter that closes.
People
A person is anyone the firm deals with — a prospective client, a current client, a spouse. People exist independently of matters and can appear on more than one. When a new inquiry arrives, the platform matches it against existing people (by email and name) instead of minting duplicates, and flags ambiguous matches for review.
Joint engagements
Couples are first-class. A joint matter carries both spouses from the start — both names captured at inquiry, one shared intake that both can work in, and per-person answers where the law cares about the difference (each spouse's own healthcare agent, for example). You never manage a couple as two disconnected files.
Status, stage, and billing are separate axes
A matter's status (active or closed), its lifecycle stage, and its billing state move independently. Payment doesn't gate drafting; closing doesn't erase an unpaid invoice; an archived matter keeps its stage for when it's reopened.
Editing matter details
Staff can edit a matter's descriptive fields — scope, custom fields, the matter-type tag — from the matter header. Once an engagement letter has been signed, the signed scope is anchored: edits that would drift from what the client signed are surfaced rather than silently absorbed.