How do you handle conflicts of interest?

Checked before I see a file: the parties and the project are screened against my other engagements, and I decline where they clash. A conflict here means I am already acting, or have recently acted, for someone on the other side of your dispute, or on the same project, which would compromise whose interests I serve. Working across several practices only functions if each can trust that their files never inform anyone else's, so the check runs before any papers move, and everything I learn inside an engagement stays inside it on written terms. Where a conflict surfaces mid-engagement, rare but possible on long disputes where new parties appear, I declare it the day it appears rather than managing it quietly, so you can decide how to proceed with the full picture.

Picture two claims consultancies that both use me. On Monday firm A asks me to value a fit-out contractor's loss and expense claim against a main contractor on a hotel refurbishment. On Wednesday firm B rings about a new instruction, and as they name the parties I recognise the same main contractor on the other side of the same project. I stop firm B there, before any papers change hands, and decline, because acting for both sides of one dispute would compromise whose corner I am in. Neither firm learns anything about the other's file. Run the check on the parties, the project and the dispute up front, and a clash gets caught at the door rather than halfway through, when it is far messier to unwind.