Practice areas and sub-practice areas

The four levels

Superpractice uses a hierarchy that moves from a broad legal category to the exact offering your firm sells:

Practice area
└── Service group
    └── Sub-practice area
        └── Service

For example:

Intellectual Property
└── Patents
    └── Provisional Patents
        └── Provisional Patent Application — Software

When to use each level

• Use a practice area when the record or campaign is genuinely broad, or when you do not know the precise need yet.
• Use a service group when reporting needs a useful middle level but several specific subareas still apply.
• Use a sub-practice area when the inquiry, service, or campaign targets a specific legal need.
• Use a service on matters to record what the firm is proposing or selling.

Choose the most specific level you can support with accurate information. Do not guess a precise subarea during early intake just to fill a field.

Configure the firm's practice areas

1. Open Settings > General.
2. Find Practice Areas.
3. Select every broad practice area the firm actively handles.
4. Expand a selected practice area to review its service groups and sub-practice areas.
5. Either:
   • Leave its sub-practice-area selection empty to include all available subareas, or
   • Select only the subareas the firm actually handles.
6. Save the settings.
7. Review the contact, service, campaign, and content pickers to confirm the intended choices appear.

Broad areas vs. selected subareas

Use only the broad area when:

• The firm accepts many types of work in that area.
• Intake often starts before the exact need is known.
• A brand campaign promotes the entire department.

Select specific subareas when:

• The firm handles only part of a broad practice area.
• Services and campaigns need precise categorization.
• Content and AI recommendations should stay within a narrower scope.

Example: a firm may select Intellectual Property but only the trademark and copyright subareas. That keeps patent-specific options out of firm-scoped workflows.

Assign a practice area to a contact

1. Open the contact record.
2. Click the Practice Area field.
3. Search or browse the configured taxonomy.
4. Select the most accurate known level.
5. Update it later if intake reveals a more specific need.

The contact's practice area describes the person's current inquiry. It does not replace the services attached to a matter.

Map a service

Services map to a sub-practice area, not directly to an arbitrary broad area.

1. Open Settings > Services.
2. Create or edit the service.
3. Choose the most specific accurate Sub-Practice Area.
4. Save the service.

Superpractice derives the middle service group and broad practice area from that selection. See Services for the complete setup flow.

Map a marketing campaign

Campaign mapping can use the broad area, a middle group, or a sub-practice area. Use the level that matches the campaign's actual targeting:

• Firmwide reputation campaign → Brand
• General IP campaign → Intellectual Property
• General patent campaign → Patents
• Provisional-patent campaign → Provisional Patents

See Campaign to practice-area mapping for Google, Meta, and OpenAI instructions.

What the taxonomy affects

Accurate setup improves:

• Intake and contact classification
• Service and retained-revenue reporting
• Campaign spend, CAC, and ROI reporting
• Content and SEO topic selection
• AI recommendations that use the firm's configured areas
• Lifetime-value modeling by service group

Changing the firm's selection can change which options are available going forward. It does not automatically rewrite every historical contact, matter, or campaign mapping.

Recommended setup sequence

1. Select the firm's broad practice areas.
2. Narrow each one only where the firm does not offer every subarea.
3. Create and map services.
4. Map active campaigns.
5. Classify a test contact and create a test matter with a service.
6. Confirm practice-area and service reporting.

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