Law Firm Conflict Checks: How the Process Works, Step by Step

A law firm conflict check is the search a firm runs before it takes on a new client, matter or party, to find out whether the work would conflict with its duties to current, former or prospective clients. The firm searches its records for every party involved, a conflicts analyst reviews what comes back, and a lawyer decides whether the matter can proceed, needs informed consent, or has to be declined. The search is the work. The decision is the judgment.

This guide walks through the process as a conflicts department runs it. It is a description, not legal advice: the rules are adopted state by state, and your firm’s conflicts policy is the operative text.

When a conflict check is required

• A new client. Before the engagement, and before the firm learns more than it needs to run the check.
• A new matter for an existing client. The client is known; the other parties on the new matter are not.
• A new party on an existing matter. An added defendant, a new investor in a deal, a guarantor who appears late.
• A lateral hire. Every matter the lawyer worked on at the prior firm is checked against this firm’s clients before the offer. AmLaw 200 firms took on 13,214 lateral lawyers in 2025, including 3,009 partners, according to Firm Prospects’ annual lateral report, and each one is a conflicts request.
• A prospective client consultation. Even if the firm is never engaged, what it learns in the consultation can disqualify it later.

The rules behind it

Four ABA Model Rules do most of the work, and most states have adopted versions of them.

The process, step by step

1. Collect the parties, and only the parties

The requesting attorney, or the intake team, submits the request: the client, the client’s related parties (parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers and principals where relevant), the adverse parties, and any other interested parties such as co-defendants, lenders, guarantors or insurers. Rule 1.18 is the reason to stop there: detailed facts about a prospective client’s problem belong after clearance, not before.

2. Build the full party list

The names on the form are the start. The analyst adds the variants a search has to catch: legal names and trade names, abbreviations, former names, individuals behind an entity, and the corporate family. A subsidiary that is not on the form is the classic miss, especially when a client’s outside counsel guidelines treat affiliates as the client.

3. Search everywhere the firm keeps names

At minimum, the conflicts database and the client and matter records in the financial system, open and closed, including matters where a party was adverse rather than the client. Many firms also search time entry narratives and the text inside the document management system, because a party can appear in a closed file without ever being entered as a party.

4. Review the hits

Most hits are noise: a common surname, a different company with a similar name. The analyst works through each one against the client, matter and relationship it came from, and sorts them into cleared, needs attorney input, and potential conflict.

5. Ask the attorneys who own the hits

When a hit is real, the attorney responsible for the other matter is asked about it: is the matter active, is it substantially related, is there confidential information at stake. This is where most of the calendar time goes. The search takes minutes; waiting for answers takes days.

6. Report, and decide

The analyst summarizes the results for the requesting attorney. Then a lawyer, often a conflicts attorney, the General Counsel or an ethics partner, decides: clear it, obtain informed consent and document it, screen a lateral, or decline the matter.

7. Put the controls in place

If the answer involves a screen, the ethical wall goes up in the financial and document systems and everyone affected acknowledges it. If it involves a waiver, the consent letter goes out and its return is tracked. Only then does the matter open.

8. Document it

The request, the names searched, where they were searched, what came back, who reviewed it and what was decided. The record matters most on the day someone asks whether the firm checked.

Why conflict checks miss conflicts

Checks rarely fail because someone skipped one. They fail because the search was pointed at the wrong place.

• Name variants. The same company is typed three ways in three systems. A search for one spelling returns nothing and the analyst moves on.
• Related entities never entered. The parent, the subsidiary, the guarantor. If the form did not name it, it was not searched.
• Names that live in documents. The other side of a 2023 deal was never a client or a party record. It is in the closed file. A database search cannot see it; a search of document text can.
• Incomplete requests. The request goes in without the adverse parties, and the check clears on what it was given.
• Stale data. Party records entered years ago, never updated after an acquisition or a name change.

Conflict check software

Large firms typically run a dedicated conflicts system, most often Intapp Conflicts and Intapp Intake (Intapp Open at firms that have not moved to the cloud), with ethical walls in Intapp Walls and client and matter data in Elite 3E or Aderant. Smaller firms usually rely on the conflict search built into their practice management system, such as Clio’s.

The software holds the data and runs the search. What it does not do is the work around the search: building the full party list, searching document text, chasing attorneys for answers, assembling the report and tracking waivers and acknowledgments. That is where a conflicts team’s hours go, and it is the part conflict check automation takes on.

What to automate, and what not to

The line is the same one the rules draw. Searching every variant of every party, in every system, the same way every time, is mechanical and repeatable. It is also exactly the work that gets done inconsistently by hand on a busy Friday. Deciding whether a conflict exists, whether it is consentable and whether the firm wants the matter is a lawyer’s judgment and should stay one.

The conflict check how-to film shows a real run: an intake form starts the check, every spelling is searched across Clio and the text inside iManage, the memo is written to Teams and the matter goes on a conflicts hold for the ethics partner.

If you run a conflicts team, the page for directors of conflicts lays out where the week goes and what can come off it. The people who run the searches are covered in the conflicts analyst role, and the intake side in new matter intake and conflicts at scale.