Exploring Legal Matter Management

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Legal Matter Management

    Legal Matter Management in ServiceNow allows organizations to efficiently manage legal matters and related cross-functional tasks within a unified platform. It supports storing relevant documents, tracking key milestones, and managing workflows that require collaboration across departments. This application is designed to streamline legal requests that necessitate extensive investigation and coordination.

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    Key Features

    • Role-Based User Access:
      • Matter Configurator: Configures practice areas, categories, legal matter templates, and notification templates.
      • Matter Fulfiller: Submits legal matters, defines workflow phases and tasks, marks matters as privileged and confidential, manages assigned legal matters, initiates approvals, engages outside counsel, communicates via Legal Counsel Center, and manages documents and milestones.
      • Matter Manager: Creates and promotes legal matters, manages privileged/confidential status, and uses Legal Counsel Center to oversee matter progress.
    • Comprehensive Workflow: Legal matters can be created from legal requests or directly by practice area leads. Matters can be marked as privileged and confidential to protect sensitive information, with flexibility to update this status. The workflow supports task creation, phase tracking, milestone management, document/artifact storage, and association of related legal requests.
    • Attorney-Client Privilege: Enables marking matters as privileged and confidential to ensure compliance with legal confidentiality requirements.
    • Integration with Outside Counsel: Integrates with Legal Tracker to manage engagements and expenditures related to outside counsel.
    • Legal Counsel Center: Provides an optimized interface for tracking, prioritizing, and managing multiple legal matters concurrently.
    • Templates and Notifications: Use predefined templates for different practice areas including phases and tasks, along with notifications to ensure timely task and milestone completion.
    • Analytics and Reporting: Offers real-time visibility and reporting capabilities to support informed decision-making on legal matters.

    Benefits to ServiceNow Customers

    • Centralizes legal matter management and documentation, improving organization and efficiency.
    • Enables cross-departmental collaboration with clear workflows and task tracking.
    • Protects sensitive legal information through attorney-client privilege handling.
    • Improves visibility and control over legal workloads and progress via Legal Counsel Center and reporting tools.
    • Facilitates external legal engagement management and cost tracking.

    Next Steps

    ServiceNow customers can explore further by configuring Legal Matter Management, learning how to work on legal matters through detailed guides, and accessing references to maximize the application’s capabilities.

    Legal Matter Management enables you to manage legal matters and cross-functional tasking to effectively complete legal work. You can store relevant documents and track important milestones of these legal matters from a single place.

    Legal Matter Management overview

    The ServiceNow® Legal Matter Management application enables you to complete legal requests that need cross-departmental tasking and a workflow with a mechanism to store supporting documents and track important milestones.

    Legal Matter Management users

    Table 1. Users
    User Description
    Matter Configurator Matter Configurator configures data such as practice area, category, legal matter templates, and notification templates
    Matter Fulfiller Matter Fulfiller can do the following:
    • Submit legal matter.
    • Define phases and task in the workflow.
    • Mark matter as Privileged and confidential.
    • Works on assigned legal matter.
    Matter Manager Matter Manager can do the following:
    • Create and promote legal matter.
    • Mark matter as Privileged and confidential.
    • Use Legal Counsel Center to manage and track matter progress.

    Legal Matter Management workflow

    1. A legal matter is submitted by any of the following method.
      • A paralegal staff or lawyer can promotes a legal request to a legal matter if the request needs additional investigation and substantial time to work on.
        • If the legal request has Privileged and Confidential enabled, the matter is created with Privileged and Confidential status. The matter owner can later remove the Privileged and Confidential status of the matter.
        • If the legal request has Privileged and Confidential disabled, the matter is created also has Privileged and Confidential disabled. You can enable the Privileged and Confidential status later.
      • A practice area lead creates a legal matter directly. These matters do not have any parent legal request though related requests can be added to them.
    2. The legal matter is assigned to a matter fulfiller.
    3. The legal matter fulfiller performs the following actions as required:
      • Marks a matter as Privileged and Confidential.
      • Initiates an ad hoc approval for a legal matter.
      • Engage with outside counsel.
      • Communicate using emails from Legal Counsel Center.
      • Add a phase to a matter to track specific tasks to complete the matter.
      • Create a task in a legal matter or a phase of the matter that you or another user should perform to resolve the matter.
      • Create an artifact for a legal matter to upload and store documents, emails, and files related to the matter.
      • Add a milestone to a legal matter
      • Associate one or more legal requests with a legal matter to organize and resolve related requests through a single matter.
    4. Matter Fulfiller closes the legal request on fulfilling it.

    Legal Matter Management benefits

    Table 2. Legal Matter Management benefits
    Benefit Feature Users
    Matter templates for different practice areas with predefined phases and tasks Legal matter templates Matter configurator
    Track and complete tasks and milestones through notifications Create a task for a legal matter Matter fulfiller
    Make meaningful decisions by gaining real-time visibility on legal matters Analytics and Reporting Solutions for Legal Service Delivery Matter Manager
    Track, prioritize, and work on multiple legal matters concurrently with an optimized Legal Counsel Center Legal Counsel Center Matter fulfiller and Matter Manager
    Attorney Client Privilege enables legal fulfillers to mark legal requests as privileged and confidential. This capability helps you protect sensitive legal communications and comply with attorney-client privilege requirements. Attorney Client Privilege Legal Fulfiller and matter owner
    Engage with outside firms & counsels by integrating legal matters with Legal Tracker application to track areas or matters handled by outside counsels and track spends on outside counsel engagement. Engage with outside counsel Matter fulfiller

    What to explore next

    To learn more about configuring and using Legal Matter Management, see: