Managing Practice Areas

Practice areas group your matters by type of law, such as Family or Personal Injury. For each practice area you can add a custom form with extra fields for its matters, suggested deadlines and default document folders.

Table of contents

• Open the practice areas
• Add a practice area
• Edit a practice area and its subjects
• Build a custom form

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Open the practice areas

Go to Settings > Practice Management.

1. Add practice area creates a practice area.
2. The columns: Name, Abbreviation and Subjects.
3. The edit button and the actions arrow of each practice area.
4. The filter panel and help.

1. Click the actions arrow of the practice area.
2. Edit practice area changes its name, abbreviation and templates.
3. Manage custom form opens the custom form editor.
4. Delete deletes the practice area.

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Add a practice area

1. The General and Templates tabs.
2. Enter the Practice Name (required).
3. Enter an Abbreviation.
4. Click Save.

1. The Templates tab.
2. Deadlines and Document Folders.
3. In Deadlines, under Suggested Deadlines, click + Add Suggestion and select a deadline type in Select Deadline Type. In Document Folders, click + Add Folder to add the folders that are created automatically when a new matter of this practice area is opened.
4. Click Save.

Each suggested deadline has these fields:

Field	What to enter
Deadline Type	The type you selected.
Criticality	How critical the deadline is (Medium by default).
Offset and Unit	How long after the start the deadline falls, in Days, Months or Years.
Def. Role	The default role responsible: None, Paralegal, Office Manager, Legal Assistant, Law Clerk, Case Manager or Attorney.

Click the trash icon to remove a suggestion.

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Edit a practice area and its subjects

1. Click the actions arrow of the practice area and click Edit practice area.
2. In the General tab, change the Practice Name or Abbreviation.
3. Under Subjects, click the add button to add a subject for this practice area. Subjects are shown in the Subjects column of the list.
4. Change the Templates tab if needed and click Save.

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Build a custom form

A custom form adds fields to the matter form of a practice area. In the actions menu of the practice area, select Manage custom form.

1. A block: a section of the form. Click it to edit it.
2. An input: a field of the form. Click it to set its name, type, width, whether it’s required and its default value or options.
3. In Form Properties, enter the form Name (First Custom Fields Form by default).
4. The blocks of the form. Use the buttons to edit, move up, move down or delete a block.
5. Add new Block adds a section. When the form is empty, click Add first block.
6. Save saves the form. Cancel asks All changes will be lost. Are you sure?; click Yes to discard your changes.
7. Show preview shows how the form will look in the matter.

The form is built as blocks, rows and inputs. A new block starts with one text input. In Block Properties, enter the block Name and click Add new Row to add rows. Click an input to set its properties:

Input property	What to enter
Name	The label of the field.
Type	TEXT, TEXT AREA, NUMBER, CURRENCY, DATE, CHECKBOX, OPTIONS, CLIENT or MATTER.
Is a required field	Check it to make the field required.
Default Value	The value filled in by default.
Width	How wide the field is in its row (Full Width by default).

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Related articles

• Getting started with Matters
• Managing Matter Deadlines
• Managing Deadline Types