Practice areas and stages

Practice areas are the areas of law your firm works in, organised into practice groups, such as "Litigation" with areas "Commercial litigation" and "Employment disputes". Each matter has a practice area, and each area has its own stages. Manage them under Firm settings → Practice areas (needs Manage practice groups and areas).

Add a practice group#

1. Click Add practice group and give it a name.
2. On the group's page, click Add area for each of its areas.
3. Click Save.

Everything about a group (its name, areas, order and public page) is edited on one page and saved together. Move areas up and down to reorder them, change an area's Practice group to move it to another group (it goes last there), and use Remove area to remove one when you save; matters already in it keep it.

On the Practice areas list, move groups up and down to reorder them, and switch them on or off.

Names must be unique (practice groups within the firm, areas within their group), ignoring capitals.

Enabled and disabled#

A group or area that isn't Enabled can't be picked for new matters and stays off your site. Disabling doesn't change existing matters.

A group can't be deleted while it still has areas: move or remove them first.

Stages#

Stages are the steps a matter in an area goes through, such as "Intake", "Discovery", "Trial".

1. On the group's page, open an area's stages (save a new area first).
2. Add stages with a Name and a Colour, and put them in order.
3. To reuse another area's stages, choose Copy, then Copy stages from and the area. This replaces the area's own stages.

A stage that any matter is at (open, pending or closed) can't be deleted or replaced by a copy.

On your website#

Practice groups can each have a public page: see Practice areas on your site.