Store each fact in the object and format that best preserves its meaning, then let Parley use those facts to drive context, organization, and work.
The core objects
Accounts
An Account represents an organization or other institutional entity — a company employing a beneficiary, a corporate client, a university, nonprofit, or government agency, or a partner law firm. Accounts hold information belonging to the organization as a whole: its name, website, business context, reusable documents, and organization-level custom fields. An Account can be linked to many Projects, and associated with Contacts who work for, represent, or otherwise belong to it.Contacts
A Contact represents an individual person — a client or beneficiary, an employee of an Account, a witness, recommender, signatory, or attorney, or a family member participating in a matter. A Contact may optionally be associated with an Account, and may be linked to many Projects. Contact-level information should describe the person, not a particular matter: citizenship, passport information, email address, a general professional overview.Projects
A Project is Parley’s container for a body of work. Your practice may call it a matter, case, engagement, petition, or filing — the underlying object is the same. A Project brings together the Accounts and Contacts involved, Project-specific custom fields, source files and folders, notes and working context, generated outputs such as drafts, forms, packets, and letters, and activity from the people and organizations connected to the work. A Project should hold facts and documents specific to that body of work. A beneficiary’s immigration status may belong on the Contact, while the filing category, receipt number, target date, and case status belong on the Project.How records relate
Parley uses explicit relationships rather than requiring you to encode everything in text fields.- An Account can be linked to zero or more Projects.
- A Contact can be linked to zero or more Projects.
- A Project can be linked to zero or more Accounts and zero or more Contacts.
- A Contact may optionally belong to an Account.
- Linking a Contact to a Project can also bring its associated Account into that Project when needed.
- Unlinking a record removes the relationship. It does not delete the Account, Contact, or Project.
- Which Projects involve this Account?
- Which Contacts are associated with this organization?
- Who is involved in this Project?
- Which work belongs to the same client or employer?
Use a relationship when the question is “what is this connected to?” Use a field when the question is “what value does this record have?”
Linking records
To link records that already exist, ask the Agent:“Link this Project to the petitioner’s Account and to the beneficiary’s Contact.”Parley searches your firm’s work and makes the connection. Linking improves work products — Parley reaches the Account for letterhead, reusable exhibits, and company background without you re-attaching them case by case — and keeps tracking current, because dates on a Contact update from the files in the Projects they’re on.
Creating records
Create them in the UI, or ask the Agent. Uploading client documentation to the chat and describing what you want is usually faster:“Create a Contact for each beneficiary, save them to an Account, and link the accounts and contacts.”For a bulk migration, see Importing your clients.
Everything on a record is searchable by chat. You don’t need to turn a detail into a field just to find it later — ask, and Parley searches the files and notes across every Project, Account, and Contact.