Case Bundles

Purpose: To give a name and shared information view to a group of cases, which may or may not have the same client. Optionally see events, notes, etc. across all cases in a bundle.

Example Uses:

• A housing advocate may want to group 5 cases in the same building as a bundle.
• A family law advocate may want to group the divorce, custody, and child support cases into a bundle.
• A public defender may want to group 3 co-defendants into a bundle.

Status: Available to all sites, but must be enabled by LegalServer staff. You can check your site by adding "/bundle" to the end of your site's URL (Ex: abclegal.legalserver.org/bundle). Site administrators can file a support request if not enabled (Help menu > Support Request).

Cost: There is no cost for this module.

Motto: Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and bundle them for a beautiful display.

Site Administrators see Case Bundles - Admin Setup.

In this Article:

• Summary
• Effect of Making a Case Part of a Bundle
• The Bundle Record
• How Bundles differ from Associated, Related, and Lead/Member Cases
• Working with Bundles
  • Add a Case to a Bundle
  • View a Bundle
  • Finding a Bundle
• Deactivate or Delete a Bundle?
• Notes and Known Issues

Summary

A bundle can be any group of cases. Bundles viewed from a case profile:

Effect of Making a Case Part of a Bundle

After a case is added to a bundle, the following lists on the case will show the case's records and all records from other cases in the bundle: Activities, Adverse Parties, Case Contacts, Case Notes, Documents, Events, Litigations and Timekeeping.

Most of the lists will display a column indicating if the note, timeslip, etc. is from the case you are viewing, or show the name and case number of the case the record is from.

You can filter out records from other cases in the bundle using one of two bundle filter options: "this case only" or "this case and bundle."

The Bundle Record

There is a top-level bundle record, which you can name whatever you like.   The top-level bundle provides a name for the bundle, and a dynamic bundle profile on which to view information about all of the cases in that bundle (the bundlemates).  The profile above includes an added list view element.

Display Information from Bundled Cases

It is not necessary to store any information on the main bundle record - it can hold just the name of the bundle of cases (as above). Events, notes, time, case contacts, and documents from *any* bundlemate cases are viewable on the main bundle record, so one could keep, for instance, the divorce pleading on the divorce case and the support petition in the support case, and still see those documents in the bundle profile.

Optionally Store Information on the Bundle Itself

Some agencies may want to store data on the main bundle, in the same way that one can store data on a lead case in the similar lead-member case feature.

Bundle records can contain:

• Case Notes
• Custom fields
• Documents
• Calendar Events
• Family Member/Non-Adverse Parties
• Adverse Parties - but see the Known Issue below about Common Adverse Parties (hint: Don't do that).

NB: If you decide to later remove cases from the bundle, the data stored on the bundle record stays with the bundle and will not be visible from the unbundled cases.

How Bundles differ from Associated, Related, and Lead/Member Cases

• Associated cases have the same client.
• Related cases require you to define how they are related, like: siblings, or co-defendants, etc.
• Lead/Member cases are very close to bundles, but in bundles, all cases can be on the same logical level. The 'bundle' record is somewhat similar to a lead case, but need not have a client.

A case being in a bundle does not prevent you from using any of the other case relationship options, but you should think carefully about "linking" cases together in multiple ways lest you confuse everyone.

A case can be in multiple bundles.

Working with Bundles

User role permissions control most aspects of working with bundles. Contact your site administrators if you can't perform any of these actions.

Add a Case to a Bundle

Bundles can be created directly from a case; you don't have to create the bundle record first.

The "Add to Case Bundle" block needs to be on an auxiliary process. That changes the functionality of the block from displaying the bundles (as on the profile) to having the ability to add to the bundle. Any existing bundles will be displayed in the "Associated Case Bundles" field. If you want to add to an existing bundle, you can start typing the name of the bundle in that field and it will look for a matching bundle name. Once you've selected a potential bundle, the existing bundle cases will display in the listview below that is part of the block. If you want to create a new bundle, the list view disappears in favor of a text field for the Bundle Label.

View a Bundle

A Bundle record is a matter-like record that has a profile where the user can view grouped information, like all the case notes on all bundlemates.

If you don't have access to the main Bundle page, your site administrators have likely added a list to case profiles that shows all the bundles a case is part of. That list will have a link to display each bundle.

Here is an example of displaying Documents on a bundle. The first section is documents added to the bundle itself, and then you see the documents for each bundlemate case):

For Events, Time, and Notes, they are all displayed as more typical list views with an additional column indicating the case the record is from.

Finding a Bundle

Administrators can enable a Navigation tab for Case Bundles. This displays a list with two columns -- the Bundle Labels and the Cases within those bundles. The list cannot currently be sorted or filtered.

You can also search for case bundles within the search button below the navigation bar:

Deactivate or Delete a Bundle?

You can't deactivate or delete a bundle. If you have a bundle that is not longer in use, we recommend renaming it something like "z old Foo bundle no longer in use".

Notes and Known Issues

• The top level Bundle page doesn't show a bundle until at least one case is added; a bundle with no cases is invisible, but can cause an error because of the unique name requirement for bundles. Workaround: Go to any case and associate it with the "hidden" bundle. (Ref: LS-73724) [Fixed effective 2024-02-09]
• The main Bundles page can't be filtered or searched, and the Label column can't be sorted (Ref: LS-74691)
• Adding a Common Adverse Party to a bundle will cause an error and make the bundle inaccessible. (Ref: LS-116933).