If you have an organization contact that is associated with multiple addresses, most likely a main office and a number of branches, and you wish to use one of the non-primary addresses of that contact for a particular case, you may encounter some difficulties. With the exception of plaintiffs, SmartAdvocate only uses the primary address of contacts for merge codes and table entries. This is because otherwise, you would need to select the correct address every time you selected a contact for a case or generated a document. There is a workaround that will allow you to specify the particular address to be used in a particular case, although it does require a few additional steps. The basic idea is that you create one main contact, then create as many additional contacts as you have secondary addresses. Link the secondary contacts to the main one, then for each case, add the main contact manually as a case contact whenever you add one of the secondary addresses.

Creating the Main Contact

First, create the primary contact. Click or hover the mouse over the Contacts tab in the top tool bar, then click Add Contact under that tab. This will bring up the Add New Contact panel. Click Organization to specify that the contact is an organization, then type in the name of the contact, appending "(Main Office)" or something similar to the end of the name to make it easier to see at first glance which office the contact connects to. Fill out all the other fields in the panel as usual, then click Save. (If you wish to add the secondary addresses to this contact for informational purposes, even though they will not be used by the system, click Save & Open Full Contact Card instead, then when the contact card comes up, click the Add New Address button in the Addresses section, fill in the address details, and click Save, repeating as many times as necessary to add all the addresses.)

Creating Branch Contacts

For each branch office, simply repeat the steps necessary to create the main contact, but add a parenthetical like "(Washington Office)" to each name to distinguish each branch from the others and from the main office.

Defining the Link Between the Main Contact and the Branch Contacts (Optional)

In order to specify how the main contact relates to the branch contacts, you may need to create a pair of new contact relationships. (This should only need to be done once.) Click or hover the mouse over the Admin tab in the top tool bar, then click Picklist Maintenance under that tab. This will bring up the Picklist Maintenance page. Find and click on Contact Relationships in the leftmost section of the page. Click the Add New Item button. This will bring up a small panel. Enter a name that describes the main contact relative to the branches, such as "Main Office," in the Relations field. Select Yes in the Is Work field if the addresses are linked through a corporate relationship (which they presumably are); otherwise, select No. Leave the Related To field blank for now. Click Update to save this part of the relationship.
Now click Add New Item again. Enter a name that describes the branch contacts relative to the main contact, such as "Branch Office," in the Relations field. Select the same thing in the Is Work field as you did for the previous item. In the Related To field, select the relationship you just created (i.e. Main Office or whatever you named it). This identifies the two relationships as inversely connected.
Finally, find the row of the table related to the first relationship you created (i.e. the row with Main Office, or whatever you chose, in the Relations column). Click the pencil icon in that row. This will bring the panel up again with the fields you entered still saved. Now, in the Related To field, select the second relationship you created. This will complete the two-way connection.

Linking the Main Contact to the Branch Contacts

Open up the contact card for the main contact. (If the contact card is not still open from before, you can either search for it using the quick contact search in the upper right of the screen or click Contacts List under the Contacts tab in the top tool bar and fill in the search fields.) In the contact card, click the Cases And Related Contacts tab. Next, click the Link/Add Related Contact button. Begin typing in the name of a branch contact in the Contact Name field, then when your contact is visible in the list, click that contact. In the Relationship to [Main Office name] field, find the relationship that describes the branch contact (i.e. Branch Office or whatever you named it) and select that. Click Save to add the relationship. This will automatically also add the main contact as "Main Office" (or whatever you named it) to the branch contact's contact card.
Now repeat the process to add each of the branch contacts as related contacts to the main contact's contact card. Once you have added them all, click the Save button at the bottom of the contact card. (This is actually not necessary to save contact relationships, but it is good practice anyway; the SmartAdvocate system will likely ask for confirmation if you try to leave the contact card without saving it.)

Adding the Correct Branch Contact to a Case

This step should be simple, if you have clearly distinguished the names of your branch contacts. You can add branch contacts to a case just like adding any contact to any case, and you should be easily able to tell which branch you are selecting because of the parenthetical in the name.

Adding the Main Contact to a Case with a Branch Contact (Optional)

This step will allow you to use the main contact's address in generated documents, if that happens to be necessary. Once you have added the branch contact to a case in the appropriate section of SmartAdvocate (e.g. Defendant Attorneys, Plaintiff Attorneys, etc.), click the Other tab in the left navigation pane (i.e. the leftmost area of individual case pages). Click All Contacts under the Other tab. This will bring up a list of all of the contacts associated with the case. Generally, these contacts are automatically added to this page by SmartAdvocate, but you can also manually add a contact through this screen.
Click the Add New Contact button. Begin typing in the name of the main contact in the Contact field, then when the name is visible in the list, click that contact. In the role field, type in anything that will specify, to you, the contact's function in the case (if a branch contact is the defendant's law firm, you might type "Defendant Law Firm Main Office" in this field). If you wish to add a comment here, do so in the Comments field. Click Save to add the contact to the Case.
The newly added contact can now be included in generated documents using the set of merge codes for generic case contacts (those of the Contact type, which generally begin with "CONT-"). The branch contact will still be used for merge codes related to the contact's specific role in the case (e.g. DEF-ATTY-FIRM if the branch contact is the defendant's law firm).