A conflict check compares the new client and every counterparty against the names already in the firm: current clients, former clients, counterparties on other matters, the people recorded against them, and the documents already filed. The software runs that comparison automatically and writes down what it found. It raises a question for a partner. It does not answer one.
The check is the moment the risk position is set
A matter is usually opened in the ten minutes between a phone call and a client-care letter. Someone types a name into a spreadsheet, or searches Outlook for the counterparty and reads the first four results. That is the control, and everything the firm later says about the engagement sits on top of it.
In a firm of twenty fee-earners it is also the part of the process with the least evidence behind it: the spreadsheet records the answer, not the search. The SRA thematic review of compliance officers (December 2025) addresses how compliance responsibilities are carried out inside firms, and the SRA guidance update on new technology and COLP responsibility (February 2026) addresses the COLP's position where technology is involved in that work.
What a good check has to cover
Six things, and most manual checks reach four: the client, including the way the firm wrote the name last time; the counterparties on the new matter; related entities, such as a parent or the company the client bought in March; former clients, including matters closed and archived years ago; the individuals involved, from directors to the person who signed the last deed; and the documents already sitting in the firm.
The last two are missed most often. A counterparty's name arrives in the file name of a draft or the title of a board pack before anyone puts it on a matter record. A check that only reads the matter record is checking the firm's discipline about filling in fields, not the firm's actual exposure, and it gets worse as a firm gets busier.
What LegalAI Space does when a matter is opened
The matter is a record, not a folder: client, reference, responsible partner, practice area, jurisdiction, key dates, counterparties and status. When the matter is created, a conflict check runs on its own, against five sets of names already in the firm. Matching is on normalised names: accents are folded, punctuation is dropped, an ampersand becomes 'and', and corporate suffixes such as Ltd, plc and LLP are stripped before comparison, so 'Meridian Holdings' and 'Meridian Holdings Ltd' are one name.
Similarity is scored between 0 and 1, and anything at or above 0.74 is reported. Each hit is graded adverse, same client or related, and adverse hits sort to the top. A clean result says what it compared against, and on a firm's very first matter it reads 'no other matters to check yet' rather than reporting an empty search as a pass.
Restricted matters are not an ethical wall
Some matters are private to the fee-earners on them or shared with named people. A conflict check still runs across them, because 'there is nothing' is the one answer a conflict check must never give wrongly. What changes is what the reader is told: if the hit sits inside a matter you cannot open, everything identifying is removed, the similarity score is reported as zero, and one line remains, such as 'A restricted matter may conflict, ask Priya Raman'.
This is narrower than an information barrier. A barrier names screened individuals and covers every system the firm runs, with undertakings and a record of who was screened, when, and by whom. We do not have ethical walls, and we will not describe restricted matters and conflict redaction as one.
The check goes on the register
Every conflict check writes to the audit and compliance register, up to two rows. The first is the run: when it happened, who ran it, the names checked, the number of matches, the highest severity found, and how many matters it compared against. A check with matches is marked attention; a clean check is marked ok.
The second row is the sign-off: when a partner marks the check reviewed, a separate event, at a different time, by a different person, with an optional note. It is the row a regulator asks to see. Both export to CSV and appear in the printable inspection bundle, which carries a content digest.
What this does not do
It matches names, and that is all it matches. It does not know that one company bought another last year, and it does not resolve group structures. It does not read Companies House or any other register, and it reads document titles, not the text inside documents. It does not clear anything: the result is a question for a human, not a green tick that means safe to act.
It only knows what is in LegalAI Space, so matters that live only in your practice management system are invisible to it, and there is no live DMS connector today. If the honest version of that list rules us out for your firm, it should. The parts of a conflict check that we do are the parts a spreadsheet is worst at: comparing every name against every name, every time, and leaving a record of it.