It doesn’t clear conflicts. A solicitor does.
Before
Checking whether a new client clashed with an existing one was done by whoever had time, by searching for names.
Now
Every name on an enquiry is checked against everything the firm holds, and against who owns whom. The system writes down the route it followed and a solicitor decides.
Takes every name on an enquiry, compares it against every name the firm holds including former names, then walks the recorded ownership and directorships outward and reports each route that reaches a party on an open or closed matter — with the route written out, so a solicitor can check it rather than trust it.
Corporate conflicts are an ownership problem, not a name problem. The first enquiry in the demo has no name that appears anywhere in the firm’s records — searching for it returns nothing — and its 60% owner is the party the firm is already acting against on a live case. Conflicts travel through people too: one director sitting on two boards joins two groups that share no name at all.
What was measured, and what it does not say.
Every figure carries its own limit. Of the eight firms we checked, not one states the method or the limits behind any number it advertises.
Four things it will not do.
These are in the build because a wrong answer to any of them costs more than no answer at all.
Calling itself the conflict check
The duty stays with the solicitor. The system produces a first pass and the route it took; a person reads the reasoning and decides.
Giving legal advice
Refused plainly rather than hedged into something that reads like guidance.
Computing any deadline
It does not calculate a limitation date, and it does not imply one.
Concluding on a near miss
A pair it cannot settle is listed as unresolved, not decided. Sequential identifiers are the clearest case: a near match means a different company, not the same one.
Where the model is allowed to help, and where it is not
- Two variation classes scored zero: a company that had renamed itself, and an initialism — “NCB” against “Northbank Commercial Bank Limited”. Neither is a spelling problem, so no amount of string similarity reaches them.
- A model now reads those pairs and can put one in front of a solicitor. It cannot link two parties, and that is enforced in code rather than remembered as a policy.
- So precision and the zero false merges are untouched: the model can only ever cause a person to read one more line.
- Measured after the change: 29 of 29 true pairs now reach a solicitor, against 27 of 29 before. On fourteen genuinely different companies it asked to look at none.
What Foundation Legal Advisors says.
Approved by Foundation Legal Advisors for publication.
We were the difficult client on this one. A firm cannot delegate a conflicts decision, and we said so from the start. What we have is a first pass that gathers what it finds and writes down the route it took, so a solicitor follows the reasoning rather than trusting a result. The first version stopped on almost everything and they narrowed it after we complained. Noorflows still ask us twice a year whether it is behaving.
Six more, built the same way.
Each names its client and says what it refuses. Every price is published, from $390.
Order support
Birdy Shop
It stops for a late live bird instead of guessing.
Invoice exceptions
Ledger Solutions
It stops the invoice and attaches the reason.
Applicant documents
Nextgen Recruiter
It flags applicants. It rejects nobody.
Production tracking
Streetwear Classy
It won’t reconcile for you. It names the stage that broke.
Appointment booking
Elite Clinic
It won’t book what it shouldn’t, and it records why.
Site operations
S J Construction
Every delivery carries two numbers: what the note said, and what somebody counted.