Legal Matter Management

Legal matter management is the tracking of legal work, including cases, disputes, investigations, and advisory requests, from intake to resolution. It gives the legal team one view of what is open, who owns it, and what is due. SmartSuite holds each matter as a record with its tasks, documents, and links to the request, contract, or vendor involved, so the department works from one list rather than many inboxes.

Every matter is created in the same table, whether it starts from an intake form, a contract request, or a lawyer’s own entry. Matters are grouped by type, practice area, or business unit in views, and permissions decide who sees which matters. A general counsel opens one dashboard and sees the whole department’s workload.

Tasks live on the matter record with an owner, a due date, and a status. Automations create the standard tasks for a matter type when the matter opens, remind owners before deadlines, and escalate overdue items to the matter lead. The lawyer’s My Work page lists every task assigned to them across all matters.

Business stakeholders are given access to their own matters, where they can comment, answer questions, and attach documents on the record. Comments and @mentions keep the discussion with the matter rather than in email threads. Legal keeps control of the fields that matter, while stakeholders see status without asking for it.

A legal request can become a matter with one action, and the matter keeps a link back to the request. Contract-related matters link to the contract record in Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), so the agreement, its negotiation history, and the matter sit together. Nothing is re-entered between the three processes.

Yes. Matters can be organized by region, entity, and practice area within one workspace, with permissions that keep confidential matters confidential. Views and dashboards filter by any of those dimensions, so a regional lead sees their region and the general counsel sees everything. Adding a new entity or practice area is a configuration change, not a new system.

Dashboards report open matters by type, owner, and age, time to close, and upcoming deadlines, each widget drilling into the matters behind the number. Rollups on the matter show related spend when Legal Spend & Outside Counsel Management is in use. Leaders use the same dashboard for resourcing decisions and board reporting.

Outcomes improve when deadlines are visible and the record is complete: nothing is missed because a reminder fired, and nothing is rebuilt because the documents and decisions are on the matter. Closed matters stay searchable, which gives the team precedents for the next similar case. The department can show the business what it handled and how long it took.