What is the Relationship Tab?
What is the Relationship Tab?
The relationship tab is where all parties related to a case are listed. This includes defendants, attorneys, judges, witnesses, officers, agencies, victims, secretaries, investigators, etc.
By default, the Relationship tab displays a list of the current parties related to a case.
STAC will automatically move a relationship to a “non-current” status when a new one is added, allowing to keep a history of all parties that were related to a case at all times. At the top of the tab, there is a filter that easily allows switching between current and all relationships, and there is a column that displays whether a relationship is current or not.
What is the Victim Flag?
The victim flag is used to indicate victims in a case. This flag is also helpful to select relationships for documents and variables
There are relationships for victims and business victims for example, but this field is useful to indicate law enforcement personnel who became a victim in a case. This is much more efficient than adding the same officer as a victim.
Relationships for Attorneys
Although this is one of those situations where there is no right or wrong, there are a few important considerations when defining relationships for attorneys.
Some offices choose to use a relationship for attorneys involved in the early stages of a case. Usually, they are FASA of FAPD for Filing Assistant State Attorney or Filing Assistant Public Defendant, and additional relationships for the later stages of a case they use TASA or TAPD for Trail ASA and Trail APD. The problem with this approach is that it is more complicated to programmatically determine who is the current attorney. Additionally, there is not a lot that can be determined from having these two relationships. Some agencies have many more relationships to classify attorneys, and this makes it difficult to implement triggers, notifications, and even run reports.
Instead, using a single relationship is usually a much more effective way to track attorneys. All relationships have a field to indicate when a relationship was added and when it was replaced. This facilitates searching who was the attorney when a hearing took place, when the case was filed, etc. Having a single relationship for attorneys also makes it much easier to configure e-File, notifications, emails, etc.
Relationship Type and Directory Type
STAC uses the relationship tab to store all parties related to a case. From the defendant to the Judge and everyone in between.
The main advantage is that STAC can point out any possible conflict as parties are added to a new case. People who are involved in many cases can be easily found regardless of how they were related in previous cases. Another benefit of this model is that we can easily identify the cases where a specific attorney worked or cross-reference cases by attorney and judge.
As users can imagine, there are quite a few entries in the directory table, and to facilitate finding and maintaining these records, we implemented the Directory Type. The important item to highlight here is that every relationship type should be mapped to a correspondent directory type. For example, users may choose to implement a relationship for an Arresting Officer and Other Officers involved, but these two relationships should be mapped to a single relationship for Officers.
In general relationships for Defendants, Witnesses, and Victims should be mapped to use a directory type of OTHER. This is the directory type where most users can add, edit, or even delete. Other relationships should point to matching directory types: Judges, Attorneys, Secretaries, Agencies, Law enforcement, etc. Using this structure makes it easier for users to find records when searching for the relationships that are related to multiple cases.
What actions can be taken on the Relationship tab?
There are many actions that can be done on the relationship tab, including:
- Copy relationships to other cases
- Bookmark a relationship
- Retrieve cases by Directory
- Send message (email, text, or voice message)
- Add Phone
- Add Address
- Add Notification
- Remove current
- Reject Subpoena
- Reject Notification
- Send a form
- Export to excel
How to add a Relationship?
Adding relationships is very easy. They can be added from the Add Case Wizard when the case is created, also from the case list using the right click menu, or in the Relationship tab any time after the case is created.
As in most tabs, relationships can be added to multiple cases at once, by selecting all cases before going into the Add Relationship screen or the right click menu from the case list.
It is important to remember many relationships can be added automatically using the Event or Relationship Triggers and by implementing data exchange with other agencies.
Below are the fields available when adding a Relationship:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Relationship | The relationship being added |
| Name | The name of the relationship being added. The format is always the last name first, a comma, and first name. Names can be entered partially |
| Relationship Info | A reference number for the party. For example, if this is a lab, this would be the lab’s reference number to this case. Many circuits do not use this field |
| Address Confidential | When checked, this protects the address from being displayed when referencing that relationship, but only for the specific case |
| Victim | Indicates if this party is a victim |
| Witness Category | The witness category used in discovery |
| Comment | Any comment about this party |
| Reject Subpoena | This will prevent this party to be selected when merging a subpoena for a relationship document |
| Reject Notification | This will prevent this party to be selected when merging a notification for a relationship document |
| Relationship Date | The date that party was related to the case. This field should be read-only and default to the current date and time |
| Paperless Delivery | It causes the system to automatically select this party to be emailed when merging a Paperless delivery document |
| Relationship to defendant | Indicates a victim relationship to the defendant |
The Reject Notification and Reject Subpoena only work on a relationship Document. The don’t work on a Relationship or Relationship List variable.
How to Copy Relationships to other cases?
There are times that it may be useful to copy a relationship from one case to another.
Copying relationships does not remove any relationships or information from the current case.
Users can copy one or multiple relationships at once to another case.
To copy relationships, select the desired relationship(s) > Drag and drop over the desired case
How to remove a relationship from the current relationships?
There are a few ways to remove a relationship. This includes deleting the relationship from the case and removing the current relationship.
If a relationship is deleted, then the relationship is deleted from the case. However, we can also remove the current relationship, and this will keep a record of the relationship in the case.
To remove the current relationship in the Relationship tab, Select the relationship > Right click Menu > More > Remove Current
There is an action button that says Show: Current, users can change this to Show: All and this would show all the previous relationships that once were a part of the case but have been replaced or removed. This does not show relationships that were deleted!
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