Conflicts check: running one properly before you open the matter

A conflicts check is the search you run before accepting instructions, to find out whether acting for this client against this opponent would put the firm on both sides of something. It takes minutes when the data is in one place and it is impossible when it is not. The check itself is trivial; the register it searches is the whole job.

What a conflicts check has to search for

Names alone are not enough. A lawyer conflict check that only looks at the client name misses most real conflicts.

• The prospective client, in every spelling and former name you have been given.
• Every adverse party, including ones mentioned only in the enquiry note.
• Related entities — parent, subsidiaries, directors, shareholders, trustees, guarantors.
• Witnesses and experts where the matter type makes them likely to recur.
• Former clients, because duties of confidentiality survive the file closing.
• Declined enquiries, which are the most commonly missed category: you may hold confidential information from a conversation that never became a matter.

The register is the part that fails

Most firms can describe their conflicts check accurately and still not be able to run it, because the underlying names live in a practice management system for open matters, a spreadsheet for enquiries, and nowhere at all for the conversations that went no further. One searchable register of parties with their role, matter reference and date fixes the check without changing the policy. Ettex Records is a workable shape for that: one row per party per matter, with role and status columns, searchable across closed and declined work as well as live files.

Record declined enquiries with the same rigour as accepted ones. A conflict you cannot see because the enquiry was never logged is still a conflict.

Running the check

1. Collect full names and any alternates before searching, not after — a check run on a partial name produces a clean result that means nothing.
2. Search the register for every name in the matter, client and adverse alike.
3. Review the hits yourself rather than accepting a system verdict; most hits are coincidences of name and a few are the reason the check exists.
4. Classify the outcome: no conflict, conflict, or potential conflict requiring consent or an information barrier.
5. Record who ran the check, when, what was searched, and what was found — including "nothing found", which is a result.
6. Re-run the check when a new party joins the matter, which is the point at which most firms stop checking.

When the answer is not "no"

A conflict is not automatically the end of the instruction. Depending on the jurisdiction and the type of conflict, the options are informed consent from both clients, an information barrier with recorded controls, or declining. What matters for the file is that the analysis and the decision are written down at the time, with the consent itself in signed form rather than remembered as a conversation. The conflict of interest policy sets out which route is available; the conflicts check record shows you followed it.

The checks that hold up on review

• A dated record for every matter, including the ones where nothing was found.
• Searches covering related entities, not just the named client.
• Declined enquiries in the same register as accepted work.
• Evidence of re-checks when parties were added.
• Consents in writing, attached to the matter rather than to an email thread.
• Information barriers described concretely — who is excluded, from what system, since when.

Two adjacent procedures often get muddled with this one: client due diligence answers "may we take this client's money", and the client intake form collects the facts. The conflicts check answers a narrower question, and it is the only one of the three that can require you to turn down profitable work.