Mersal Conflict Checking
The problem
A conflict is rarely discovered by someone deciding to look for it. It surfaces months later, in a hearing, when a name in an opponent's filing is one your firm already acts for. By then the matter has a file, invoices and correspondence, and the question is no longer whether there is a conflict but what the firm knew and when.
How Mersal solves it
Mersal screens the parties before the matter row is created. The intake wizard does not open a matter and then check; it holds the matter until the check resolves, searching clients, organizations, their directors and ultimate beneficial owners, and external counsel. If anything matches, the person opening the matter must record a waiver reason in their own words before proceeding.
How it works
Screened before the matter exists
The check runs at intake, on the parties as typed, against every entity the firm has ever recorded. That ordering matters: a check run after the matter is open produces a record of a decision already taken, which is not the same thing as a decision.
Entities, not just client names
Firms conflict against people who never appear as clients. Mersal screens organizations, their directors and their ultimate beneficial owners, so a match through a corporate parent or a shared director surfaces at intake rather than in cross-examination. Name matching is fuzzy, because real filings spell names inconsistently.
The waiver is part of the record
When a search returns hits, the matter cannot proceed on a shrug. The reason for proceeding is typed, attributed and stamped, and the check is logged either way — cleared, flagged or escalated. A search that found nothing is as much a record as one that found something.
A graph, when a list is not enough
Relationships between clients, organizations, directors and UBOs render as a graph as well as a list, because the useful question is often not "does this name match" but "how are these two parties connected".
What it prevents
- Discovering a conflict after the engagement letter is signed
- A cleared search that nobody can produce afterwards
- Conflicts that hide one layer up, in a parent company or a shared director
The fastest way to judge this is to watch it run against your own way of working.