Entity consistency

What an entity is here

An entity is a thing a system holds a record of: a business, a person, a place. It is distinct from any page about that thing. A firm may have twenty pages and one entity, or, where its details conflict across sources, three weak entities and no clear one.

The question is never how many pages mention a firm. It is whether a system reading them concludes they describe the same business.

Where the conflicts come from

• A move, with the old address surviving across directories
• A name change or a partner leaving, with both names live
• An attorney appearing with and without a middle initial
• A tracking number on the site and a different number on the profile
• A suite number written four ways
• Two live Google profiles from different eras

Each is small and they compound. A system reconciling six variants of one firm has a harder job than one reading a single consistent account, and the harder job produces a vaguer answer.

The fix

Fix the canonical strings once, as in chapter 16, then apply them everywhere: the site footer, the structured data, the Google Business Profile, the bar directories, the legal verticals, the aggregators, and every attorney biography.

Then keep them. The most common regression is a new marketing campaign introducing a tracking number or a shortened firm name, undoing a quarter of consistency work in an afternoon.

People matter as much as the firm

Systems resolve organisations partly through the people attached to them. A founder named consistently, described the same way across sources, and linked to the same organisation everywhere makes that organisation easier to identify with confidence.

This is why attorney biography pages do entity work as well as trust work, and why the name form chosen in chapter 34 has to be the one used in the bar listing and the legal directories too.

Chapter assignment

The assignment for Entity consistency is to turn the chapter's advice into a fixed entity or prompt record that can be observed again. Begin with the question that caused the reader to open this chapter. Write it in one sentence and name the person who can approve the answer. The chapter premise is: One firm name. One address. One telephone number. One form of each attorney's name. Everywhere. This chapter is short because the instruction is short and the work is dull.

For Entity consistency, define completion before doing the work. A task is complete when the firm can inspect the changed asset, recover the starting state and repeat the check without relying on memory. Activity counts and dashboard labels do not satisfy that rule. The retained deliverable is the source map, prompt log and dated output sample.

Set up the working file

Create the Entity consistency folder under the market and observation date. Put the baseline or source copy first. Add a short manifest that names the asset owner, operator, approver, measurement unit and next review date. Link to firm-controlled credentials through the approved credential system; never place a password in the workbook.

The Entity consistency file records unknown fields as unknown. An empty value is a prompt for the owner, not permission to infer. If two sources disagree, save both and open a conflict row before choosing one. For public legal text, identify the attorney who will check the statement. For measurement, identify the instrument and settings. For vendor work, identify the export and exit right.

Execution pass

1. Observe. Save the present state and note why it matters to the firm's criminal defense work.
2. Diagnose. Separate the visible symptom from its possible causes. Choose the smallest change that tests the diagnosis.
3. Approve. Obtain factual, attorney or commercial approval at the point required by the asset.
4. Change. Make one attributable revision and record the operator and time.
5. Verify. Repeat the original check under the same scope. Capture the result even when it failed.
6. Hand off. Store the files under firm control and assign the next review.

The Entity consistency failure to guard against is claiming a stable answer from one generated response. If it occurs, stop the release. Preserve the failed state and decide whether the work, source or instrument caused the problem. A new method needs a new baseline and version; it should not be spliced into the previous series.

Decision points

Continue the Entity consistency assignment when the starting record is complete, the owner is known and the acceptance rule can be tested. Pause when access is disputed, a legal statement awaits attorney review, the measured unit has changed or a source conflicts with the proposed wording. Cancel the task when it does not match a real charge, market, reader question or business decision.

Prioritize Entity consistency by dependency. Ownership comes before optimization. A baseline comes before a change report. A charge brief comes before prose. Crawl access comes before answer testing. A defined intake event comes before a return calculation. This order prevents later work from resting on an unknown or disputed input.

Quality review

For Entity consistency: Repeat the observation and inspect the cited source origin before reporting a trend. Then ask whether a new operator could reproduce the check from the handoff. Confirm that page headings name the reader's question, local claims name the correct market, and measurement statements retain their units. Verify that no confidential matter fact or unsupported outcome entered a public file.

Check source control for Entity consistency as well. A statement on the firm's own page is first-party. A publisher-owned sibling domain is still the same origin. An award citation must keep the issuer's qualification. A vendor screenshot is useful evidence of a recorded state, but the firm should also retain an export when one is available.

Field exercise

Choose one live example for Entity consistency from the firm's current operation. Use a real market and a real service the firm accepts. Save the present public view before discussing improvements. Ask the asset owner to describe the problem without offering a solution. That account becomes the problem statement and gives the later review something concrete to test.

Now complete the Entity consistency assignment on that single example. Keep a side log of assumptions and evidence requests. When an assumption is confirmed, replace it with the source. When it is rejected, note the effect on the proposed work. Do not expand to a second asset until the first has passed its acceptance rule. This narrow trial exposes access problems and approval delays while the recovery cost is low.

Have a second person review the Entity consistency handoff without verbal explanation. Ask that reviewer to locate the baseline, identify the change, repeat the test and find the approval. Any answer that depends on the original operator's memory is a documentation gap. Repair the file and repeat the review.

Finally, write two Entity consistency report sentences. The first states the observable result in its native unit. The second states the limit or next decision. Remove any causal language that the record cannot support. Store the approved pair with the deliverable so the monthly report does not have to reconstruct meaning from a chart.

Handoff record

The Entity consistency handoff contains the starting record, work completed, approval, final check, open limitations and next action. Give each item a stable filename. The receiving owner should be able to say what changed, why it changed, who approved it and where the proof sits.

End the Entity consistency file with a plain decision: accepted, accepted with a named limit, returned for repair or stopped. A partially completed task should remain open. Carry the unresolved field into the next work cycle instead of hiding it inside a broad progress label.

Acceptance record for Entity consistency

Reopen Entity consistency with the source map, prompt log and dated output sample in view. Apply this review: Repeat the observation and inspect the cited source origin before reporting a trend. Record whether the file answers “One firm name. One address. One telephone number. One form of each attorney's name. Everywhere. This chapter is short because the instruction is short and the work is dull.” at its stated market and date. A different question gets a new assignment and cannot borrow the approval attached to Entity consistency.

Return Entity consistency when it shows claiming a stable answer from one generated response. Keep the rejected copy and name the record needed for another pass. Acceptance means the firm controls a fixed entity or prompt record that can be observed again, can recover the earlier state and has dated the next check.

Related chapters16. NAP consistency · 34. Attorney biographies · 32. Structured data