A “Matter” is the name for a project in Otto™. Matters are where users can work with Otto™ on their cases. Typically a Matter encompasses an individual client’s case, a specific patent application matter, a post-grant matter, a transaction, etc.
Users can now upload documents, and work on multiple “Sessions” (see below) in a central matter for all tasks during one client’s case.
Users perform legal work on a Matter in a “Session” with Otto™. A Session consists of a set of documents and a conversation that a user has with Otto™. Typically, users will complete a single task in a session. Users can have multiple Sessions inside a single Matter.
For example: over the lifecycle of a patent application, a single Matter could have the following Sessions:
- Initial disclosure received and patent application drafting
- Non-Final Office Action received and NFOA response drafting
- Final Office Action received and FOA response drafting
- Allowed application review and continuation recommendation
Users can work on each task in their own Session and refer back to it at a later point in time, picking up where they left off, or just to jog their memory on what they did and why.
Within a Matter, users can re-use all the files across their different sessions.
Within a Session, users can specify which files Otto™ should use in that specific Session. In general, it's a best practice for users to only leverage the files that are pertinent for the task at hand - although all documents from the Matter are available in each Session.
For example, when doing preliminary analysis or evaluation, the relevant documents may be the intake or disclosure form and a meeting transcript. Later in the case, when creating the propounding discovery requests, the relevant files may be just the complaint and case overview. Or the relevant documents may be an application as filed, an office action, a copy of the pending claims, and the references cited in the office action.
Users have the flexibility to specify which files to include in which Sessions.
Furthermore, there are some files that are extremely important, like the case overview, an application data sheet, client guidelines, and the like which users may want included in every Session by default.
These files can be “pinned” which signifies their importance. They will then automatically be included in each and every Session going forward. For example, in the left-hand pane below, the document “Application.PDF” has a pin to the right of the file name.
No, there is no data sharing across sessions - each session and project is isolated. This is done to prevent confidential information leaking across into areas of the work that it should not be shared for.
