The people directory
The People directory is a firm-wide view of everyone who appears across your matters — your clients, opposing counsel, experts, judges, witnesses. Because the same person often shows up in more than one case, Cedent gathers them into a single entry so you see the whole relationship, not scattered names.
What it shows
Section titled “What it shows”People are grouped by their role across your practice:
- Clients
- Opposing counsel
- Judges & neutrals — judges, mediators, evaluators, and the like
- Experts — expert witnesses, investigators, court reporters
- Witnesses
Each person’s entry lists the matters they appear on, so an opposing counsel you face in five cases is one entry with five matters attached — not five separate names. The directory leads with the people you have interacted with most recently.
People, parties, and contacts
Section titled “People, parties, and contacts”Three related ideas, kept straight:
- A party is a person’s role on one matter — “client on Smith v. Jones,” “expert on the Johnson deposition.”
- A contact is a firm-wide entry in your address book, unique per person across the firm. Opposing counsel are added to your contacts automatically as matters are created, and reused when the same counsel appears again.
- A person in the directory is the combined view — the same real individual, collapsed across the matters and contacts they appear in, matched by email so one person is one entry.
You manage your firm-wide address book in Settings → Contacts.
Finding someone
Section titled “Finding someone”Open the directory to browse by role, or open a person to see their full picture — every matter they touch and their conflict status across those matters. See How conflict checks work.
Common questions
Section titled “Common questions”The same person shows up once but on several matters — is that right? Yes. Cedent collapses the same person (matched by email) into one entry that lists all the matters they appear on, rather than repeating them.
How did opposing counsel end up in my contacts? Opposing counsel are added to your firm contacts automatically when you create a matter, so the next time they appear, Cedent recognizes them.