How to Run a Conflicts Check as a Solo Attorney

Conflicts checks have a big-firm reputation. Dedicated software, a records department, a committee that clears new matters. When you're a solo attorney whose entire client list lives in your own memory, running a formal conflict of interest check on every new matter can feel like bureaucratic theater.

It isn't. A missed conflict is one of the most expensive mistakes a solo practice can make: disqualification in the middle of a matter, forfeited fees, a malpractice claim, a bar complaint, and a former client who now has a documented grievance. And the failure mode isn't carelessness. It's the perfectly natural belief that you would remember. You won't, not five years and four hundred matters from now.

The good news is that a solo attorney conflicts system doesn't need software you don't have or time you can't spare. It needs about an afternoon of setup and two minutes of discipline per new matter. Here's how to build it.

What the Rules Actually Require

Three rules do most of the work in conflicts screening, and they cover three different populations:

• Current clients. Model Rule 1.7 bars representation that is directly adverse to another current client, or materially limited by your duties to anyone else, unless the conflict is consentable and every affected client gives informed consent in writing. Notably, adversity to a current client is off-limits even in a matter completely unrelated to what you handle for them.
• Former clients. Model Rule 1.9 prohibits taking a new matter that is the same as, or substantially related to, a former client's matter when the new client's interests are materially adverse to the former client's. Your former clients never fully leave your conflicts universe.
• Prospective clients. Model Rule 1.18 is the one solos most often miss. People who consulted you but never hired you still get protection: you can't use or reveal what they told you, and you may be barred from representing an adverse party in the same or a substantially related matter if what you learned could significantly harm them.

Rule 1.18 is why your conflicts database has to include people you never billed. Every consultation, every intake call where someone described their situation, every prospect you declined belongs in the system.

Why "I'd Remember" Fails

Solo attorneys skip formal law firm conflicts screening for an understandable reason: in year one, you genuinely can hold every name in your head. The problem is that the system you build in year one is the one you're still using in year seven, when you can't.

Memory-based conflicts checking fails in predictable ways. You remember clients but not adverse parties. You remember named parties but not the spouse, the business partner, or the LLC that was on the other side. You remember representations but not consultations that never became engagements. And memory decays exactly when the risk grows: the longer you practice, the more names accumulate and the older the matters get.

The fix costs almost nothing now and is nearly impossible to retrofit later. If you build the habit while your client list is small, you'll never face the task of reconstructing ten years of names from closed files.

The System: One Database, Four Habits

Capture the right names at intake

For every new matter and every substantive consultation, record: the client or prospect, all adverse parties, related entities (businesses, trusts, estates), and key non-parties whose interests are entangled in the matter (spouses, business partners, guarantors, co-owners). Capture names at intake, before the engagement letter, because Rule 1.18 duties attach at the consultation, not at signing.

Keep them in one searchable place

The tool matters far less than the habit. Most cloud practice management platforms include conflicts checking; if you have one, use it. If you don't, a single spreadsheet with columns for name, role (client, adverse party, related person, prospect), matter, and date works fine for a solo practice. What doesn't work is names scattered across intake forms, email threads, and paper files.

Search before every engagement, every time

Run the check when a prospect first describes a matter, and again before you sign the engagement letter if new parties have surfaced. Search every name connected to the new matter against your database, including obvious variations (maiden names, business names, initials). Two minutes, every time, no exceptions for matters that feel obviously clean. The conflicts that hurt are the ones that felt obviously clean.

Document that you checked

A one-line note in the matter file ("conflicts check run [date], no hits" or "hit found, resolved as follows") turns your system into evidence. If a conflict allegation ever surfaces, a documented, consistently applied screening process is the difference between an isolated error and a pattern of indifference.

When the Check Turns Something Up

A hit isn't automatically a disqualification. Work through it in order:

• Confirm it's a real conflict. Same name isn't always same person, and involvement isn't always adversity. Figure out what role the person played in the prior matter and how the matters relate.
• Determine whether it's consentable. Some conflicts can be waived with informed consent confirmed in writing from every affected client. Some cannot, no matter who consents. If you're unsure which side of the line you're on, your state bar's ethics hotline answers exactly this question, and a peer who has faced the same situation can help you think it through. Overture's private forums give you a place to work through those judgment calls confidentially with experienced attorneys.
• Decline properly when you must. Decline without revealing why in any way that compromises the protected party, send a non-engagement letter, and be careful not to learn more from the prospect than you already have.

Here's the reframe worth internalizing early: a conflict isn't lost revenue, it's a referral. The prospect still needs a lawyer, and you're the person best positioned to route them to a good one. With a referral network like Overture behind your practice, the matter you're conflicted out of goes to a trusted attorney, the client lands well, and in most states a compliant referral fee comes back to you. Conflicts stop being a tax on your practice and become one of its referral channels.

Solo-Specific Wrinkles

Two situations deserve extra attention in solo practice. If you share office space with other attorneys, be careful about the ways informal collaboration can impute conflicts: shared staff, shared printers and files, and casually discussed cases can blur the line between separate practices. Keep client information genuinely separate and be thoughtful about what you discuss in shared space.

And if you take co-counsel or overflow work from other attorneys, run those matters through your conflicts system like any other engagement. The referring attorney's conflicts check doesn't substitute for yours; you're screening against your own client universe, which they can't see.

The Bottom Line

A conflicts check is a two-minute habit that protects your license, your fees, and your former clients' trust. Build the database before you need it, capture prospects as well as clients, search before every engagement, and write down that you did. And when the check says no, let the referral network say yes: the matter goes to an attorney who can take it, and the relationship, and often a fee, stays with you.

Join Overture for free to build the network that turns your conflicts into referrals, and to have a confidential place to ask when a conflicts question doesn't have an obvious answer.