Clear the conflict before you open the matter.
A conflict check screens everyone involved in the matter, your clients and the other side alike, against your firm's own records. Esqase builds it into every point you take work on, and saves what it found against the record.
One search across ten kinds of record
A conflict is rarely filed under the name you type: an old client's company, an opposing party from a matter closed years ago. Esqase matches nicknames and trade names too, at every point of entry.
Esqase does not decide whether a conflict exists. It surfaces the matches, asks you to acknowledge a high-priority one before you proceed, and leaves the judgment to the lawyer reading it.
Running a conflict checkMatched on more than a name
Nicknames, name order, trade names, and company endings.
Run at each point of entry
The new-lead dialog, the wizard, hiring, and converting a lead.
Read the result, then keep the record
Matches are grouped by record type and ranked, high priority first, with a plain reason on every row. Acknowledge those before the matter saves, and the screening stays on the record afterwards.
Screen your next client.
Browse the docsFAQs
What is screened, when it runs, and what Esqase keeps.
What is a conflict of interest check?
It screens the people and companies you are about to take on against everyone and everything already in your firm's records. The point is to surface a prior relationship, an adverse party, or an old engagement that could clash with your duties to an existing or former client, and to surface it before you have taken the work on rather than after.
When does Esqase run the check?
At every point a new party enters the firm. You start it yourself from the New lead dialog and from the Customers and Related contacts steps of the new-matter wizard. It runs on its own the moment the dialog opens when you pick Conflict check from a matter's or a lead's menu, when you mark a lead as hired, and when you convert a lead to a matter.
What records does it search?
Matters, contacts, leads, invoices, tasks, activities, notes, communications, events, and documents, including text Esqase has read from inside a file. It screens each party under more than one spelling: names in either order, nicknames, trade names, a company with or without its legal ending, and the employer on a person's contact record. Your role decides which record types can be searched, and the result says what was skipped.
Does a match mean I have to decline?
No. Esqase does not decide whether a conflict exists, and it does not refuse the matter. What it does ask for is an acknowledgment: where the check returns a high-priority match, or could not finish, you tick a box saying you have reviewed it and choose to proceed before the matter saves, the lead is hired, or the lead converts. Every result opens the record behind it so you can investigate first.
How are the matches ordered?
By how much they mean. An adverse party who is or was your client, an existing or former client, and a current or former related party are all high priority. An employee or company affiliation is medium. A name that only appears in a record's text is a mention, medium priority when it matches a client on that matter and low everywhere else. Each row names its match type, explains in plain words why it surfaced, and opens that record in a new tab.
Can I run a check without creating anything?
Yes. Conflict check in a matter's or a lead's menu is a review: it screens as soon as it opens, lists every earlier screening for that record, and asks for no acknowledgment because you are not creating or converting anything. Every check runs against a lead, a matter, or the parties you have entered, so each screening is filed against a record.
Does Esqase keep a record of the checks I ran?
Yes. Every screening is saved with who ran it, when, which parties were screened, and how many matches came back. Open Conflict check from the record and earlier runs are listed underneath as Previous conflict checks, and each one also appears on the matter's activity timeline. Export CSV gives you the full list of matches as a spreadsheet for your intake file.
What if the check could not search everything?
Esqase tells you rather than reporting a clean screen. A coverage panel names what was missed and why: a record type your role cannot view, a search that did not come back, a name too short to screen, more than twelve parties selected, or a record type that hit its search limit. When that panel appears, No matches found means nothing was found in what was actually searched.