Insights
Dates, the diary, undertakings and the court
A date is only as good as the rule behind it. The deadline a firm misses is rarely one somebody saw and ignored. It is the one that was worked out from memory, entered a day out, or never entered at all because the papers were with counsel and the return date was left open. A court reads the diary afterwards with no interest in how busy the fee earner was.
These articles are about the dates a file carries and the instruments that turn on them: the limitation period, the order with a time for compliance, the offer with a relevant period still running, the undertaking that outlives the person who gave it, the judgment nobody enforced. Each shows the arithmetic, names the provision, and says what a diary that derives the date from the file and shows its working would have put in front of the fee earner.
Twelve articles, newest first. All the writing.
The work left over after completion
The SDLT return, the priority period, first registration and company charges all start at completion. A practical routine for keeping every date and balance in view until the register is right.
The records request nobody chased
A letter asking a third party for records goes out once, sits on the file looking like progress, and surfaces again only when the deadline that depends on it arrives.
The chronology rebuilt before every hearing
Each hearing brings another afternoon with the correspondence and another version that disagrees with the last. One running chronology, kept from the day the file opens, ends the rebuild.
The date that never reached the diary
The deadline a firm misses is rarely one somebody saw and ignored. It never reached the diary. The date sat in the file from the beginning, and the diary only ever held what someone remembered to type.
The bundle I opened the night before your hearing
A bad bundle costs the court its morning and your firm a weekend, and both are decided months earlier by how the file was kept.
The undertaking no one closed off
An undertaking binds the person who gave it long after the file is closed, and most firms cannot produce a list of the ones still live.
The order you complied with a day late
Most defaults run to a day rather than months, and the diary habit that prevents them costs a firm nothing to adopt.
The offer that is still open
A Part 36 offer stays open until it is withdrawn in writing. Few firms can say which offers across the caseload can still be accepted today.
The judgment you won and never enforced
A quarter of a firm's money judgments can sit untouched for years. What you know about a debtor is at its best on the day you obtain it.
The advice that never came back
Few firms can say what is out with counsel or an expert, when it went, and when it was due back.
The deed nobody watched being signed
A deed turns on a witness who was in the room, and the attestation block is usually the only proof the file keeps.
The file that arrived from another firm
A client changes solicitors and the papers arrive in a box. Every deadline and undertaking inside it becomes yours, and none of them announce themselves.
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