Introduction
Transparency of legal issues and collaborative working are just two of the many benefits of managing your legal work using the LawVu platform. To ensure those benefits are maximized, it is important that matters, files, folders, and tags are named consistently and logically so that they can be easily identified and accessed by a person other than the creator. This article provides guidance for naming matters, files, folders, and tags.
As a general rule:
Keep names short and meaningful.
The YYMMDD date format is recommended.
If using numbers, at least two digits should be used (01, not 1).
Enter 'Other entity' names in full, such as 'Limited,' not 'Ltd,' and 'Incorporated,' not 'Inc.'
Matter and contract record names
It would be best if you named matters in a way that allows a person looking at that name to understand what it will be about without having to access the matter.
For example:
Property matter types could use the matter type & property description such as Lease review: 123 High Street.
Contract matter types could use the matter type & other party, such as NDA review: ABC Incorporated.
Advice matter types could use the issue and other party, such as Dispute Advice: Mary Milan.
Files
Files should also be named in a way that allows a person looking at that name to have a good understanding of the file content without having to open or preview it.
For example:
Files related to property types could use the document type & the property description, such as Lease: 123 High Street.
Files related to contract types could use the contract type, other parties, and project, such as NDA: ABC Incorporated: Project X.
Legal opinions could use the issue and other identifying information, such as Legal Opinion: Payment Claims: Project X.
For additional details about working with files, please follow this link.
Tags
You can add tags to matters and files to enable focused searching. Organization Admins can control who can create new tags by either restricting the permission to Organization Admins only or permitting all users to create their own tags. The right approach depends on your team and culture. However, as a general rule, it is recommended that the ability to create new tags be strictly controlled to avoid duplication and inconsistency in tag names.
For example, "License", not "Licenses" or "Licence", or "Precedent" not "Template" (or vice versa).
For an overview on how to create and use both matter and file tags, click here.