A MATTER is basically a legal case, that is, a related set of legal work that deals with a person of interest (or persons of interest bound together by a set of common evidence) in a matter or a set of related legal work around a brief for a civil matter. A matter generally corresponds to a physical file (or a set of files). Matters recorded within CASES are flexible in that they may be related to other matters (via a defined set of relationships), they may be split into several separate matters over time or they may be coalesced from several matters to one matter. A matter may be in one of a number of relevant STATES and within each State there are a number of relevant TASKS and external EVENTS.