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A Firm represents an actual business with an EIN number. For example, say there is a law firm called Nelson & Murdock. They have 4 physical locations in 2 different states. They share one operating account between all locations but have 2 different trust accounts, one in each state they operate. Nelson & Murdock would be represented as a Firm in Confido. Under that Firm would be 3 Bank Accounts, 1 operating, 2 trust. Since the Confido Legal API handles financial transactions, regulations require that a certain amount of due diligence is performed before we allow businesses to use our platform. We call this process Firm Onboarding. During Firm Onboarding, we collect financial information about the business and its owners. This information then goes through underwriting to validate the legitimacy and financial strength of the Firm. Firms fill out the onboarding form through our onboarding.js form or the Confido Legal UI. Once a Firm has been approved, they can start moving money.

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One Firm, multiple people

A Firm in Confido is the business entity. That Firm can then have multiple users (Firm Admin and Firm User roles) with their own logins; additional users are managed inside the Confido Legal app. For integrations:
  • Sign Up Links attach the person who completes the link as an admin on the Firm you already created with createFirm.
  • Connect lets an existing Confido user authorize your app and yields a Firm API token you store server-side.
You should map one legal entity in your product (one “firm” row) to one Confido Firm—not one Confido Firm per attorney. Use Confido’s user roles (and your own firm_staff model) for staff vs owner; use one stored Firm API token per Confido Firm for server-to-server calls.

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Timeline

During onboarding, the firm.status field will go through the following values. A firm.updated webhook will be sent each time the firm.status changes. CREATED -> The Firm was created but there haven’t been any edits to the application yet. APP_IN_DRAFT -> The application has been updated and is currently being filled out. APP_SUBMITTED -> The application has been submitted and is going through our review process. From this stage on, the application is locked and cannot be modified. APP_IN_REVIEW -> The application is currently under review. ACTIVE -> The Firm has been approved and is ready to start processing payments. INACTIVE -> The Firm is no longer set up to process payments.

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Developing in Sandbox

In our sandbox environment, the following methods can be used to set up firms depending on whether or not you are testing the onboarding flow.

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Skip onboarding flow

If you are utilizing the createFirm mutation, the mockOnboarding input parameter can be used in sandbox only to transition the Firm directly into the ACTIVE status with one default operating and one default trust bank account. This is useful when you are developing payment features and don’t want to hassle with “onboarding” the Firm.

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Trigger via the Partner Portal

Through the Partner Portal, you can update the Firm status via the Firm settings page. Click Firms on the navbar and then click on the Firm you would like to edit.

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Trigger via a Firm Admin

If you have created a Firm Admin user for the Firm, you can log in as that user and update the status of the Firm through the Application or Settings page.

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Trigger via the GraphQL API

If you are looking to step through the statuses via the GraphQL API, we have created a series of sandboxOnly functions for the different steps of the onboarding flow. sandboxOnlyFillOnboardingData -> Fills the application with mock data, including one operating and one trust bank account. This will not overwrite fields of the application that have already been filled out (which can be useful to create a Firm with more than one trust account). sandboxOnlySubmitOnboardingData -> Transitions the Firm to the APP_SUBMITTED status. Under the hood, this will first call sandboxOnlyFillOnboardingData so this function can be called when the Firm status is either CREATED or APP_IN_DRAFT. sandboxOnlySendFirmToReview -> Transitions the Firm to the APP_IN_REVIEW status. Under the hood, this will first call sandboxOnlySubmitOnboardingData so this function can be called when the Firm status is CREATED, APP_IN_DRAFT, or APP_SUBMITTED. sandboxOnlyActivateFirm -> Transitions the Firm to the ACTIVE status. Under the hood, this will first call sandboxOnlySubmitOnboardingData so this function can be called when the Firm status is CREATED, APP_IN_DRAFT, APP_SUBMITTED, or APP_IN_REVIEW. It will error out if the Firm is already ACTIVE or INACTIVE.

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Production

To onboard firms in production, your team can utilize our onboarding.js form or have a Firm user log in to the Confido Legal UI to complete the form.

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Timeline

When onboarding firms in the production environment, the typical timeline from initial submission of the Firm application to the Firm being able to accept payments is 2-3 business days. Firms without any underwriting issues that sign the required documents quickly can sometimes be onboarded in under 24 hours.