Matter Parties

Parties are the people and organisations involved in a matter — clients, opposing solicitors, barristers, courts, and so on.

To add a party:

1. Open the matter and go to the Parties tab (or use the parties panel on the Overview).

2. Click Add Party.

3. Search for an existing contact or create a new one.

4. If the contact is an organisation with more than one office, an Office / Branch field appears — see Selecting a Branch below.

5. Select their role (Client, Opposing Solicitor, Barrister, Court, etc.).

6. Click Save.

The lead client is the primary billing contact. You can mark any client party as the billing contact separately if the person receiving the invoice differs.

Selecting a Branch (Multiple-Office Organisations)

Some organisations you deal with have more than one office — an insurer with regional claims offices, a social landlord with local offices, a chambers or firm with several sites. If the contact you've selected has branches recorded, an Office / Branch dropdown appears when you add them as a party, defaulting to the head office.

Once a branch is selected for a party:

• Correspondence — letters and documents generated for that party address the branch's own address rather than the organisation's default one.

• Billing — if that party is also the matter's billing contact, invoices go to the branch's billing address (falling back to its own address, then the organisation's, if the branch has no billing address of its own).

If you need to send a one-off letter or invoice to a different address just for this matter — without changing the party's usual branch — use an address override on the party instead of changing the branch (see your contact's Addresses section). An override always takes priority over the selected branch.

The same branch picker is available for a representative firm (e.g. naming which office of the opposing solicitors is acting) when recording representation for a party.