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Matter Groups Overview

You can use matter groups when you want to treat a group of matters as one for budgeting and financial reporting purposes. Using matter groups provides a company with the ability to create company budgets at the matter group level instead of at the matter level, and report spending for a matter group that summarizes all matter spending in that group. For example, it may be more useful for a company to budget related litigation at the matter group level instead of at the individual matter level. Similarly, a company may want to report budgets and spending for a group of related product trademarks.
note
Matter groups are limited to 3,000 matters.

Matter Access Rules

When a user is added as a participant to a matter group, the user automatically has access to all matters that are assigned to that group, whether the matters are currently in existence or created in the future. In other words, the user does not need to be granted access to each individual matter in the group. However, if a user has special matter access to a particular Organizational Unit or Practice Group, then that user will not be granted automatic access to all matters within a group assigned to the same Organizational Unit or Practice Group. Only users that are direct participants or delegates of direct participants in the matter group will automatically have access to all matters assigned to that matter group. Also note that unlike for individual matters, you are not required to assign matter groups to a specific Organizational Unit or Practice Group (this is an optional field in matter groups). Likewise, matters assigned to a specific matter group need not be assigned to the same Organizational Unit or Practice Group.

Matter Groups in Pending Budgets

The Pending Budgets page (
Financial
>
Budget Review
) shows any matter or matter group with a budget or with accrual data that requires review. If accruals are at the matter group level, only the matter group will be shown, not the matters assigned to the matter group. However, if at the same time a law firm matter budget has been modified for a matter assigned to a matter group, the individual matter is shown. The matter group will not be shown unless there is some independent reason for the matter group to be displayed on the page.

Using Matter Groups in Reports

One important reason to use matter groups is to enable a company to group related matters for reporting purposes. Many of the standard Tracker reports allow the company user to summarize or group spending, budget, or accruals data by matter groups, where matters have been assigned to a matter group—as opposed to listing those matters and associated financial information separately.
To report by matter group, include the
Matter Group Short Matter Name
 or
Full Matter Name
 field in your report.

This article applies to:

  • PRODUCT: Legal Tracker
  • Subject: Matter
  • Audiences: Company

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