Insights
Plain writing on AI and the regulated working day
For partners and fee earners at small and mid-sized firms in England and Wales. The questions that come up in partnership meetings, written at the length they deserve, each ending with somewhere sensible to go next.
By subject
Sixty articles about the regulated working day, and not one of them about your firm.
Find out which one fits, two minutes
The reconciliation you signed without reading
The three balances agree and the signature takes two minutes. The breach sits in the lines underneath, which nobody read.
The file anyone in the office can open
A three file test any firm can run in an afternoon to find out who in the office can open its most sensitive matters.
The rate that went up without a letter
The figures went into the accounts system in April, and the clients who agreed the old ones were never written to.
The client who asked you to email everything
A client asking for everything by email is making a request, and the firm still decides what leaves the building and by what route.
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 risk assessment that describes a different firm
The document was written once and the practice grew around it, and the distance between the two is what an inspection finds.
The client who died before the matter ended
The retainer ends at the moment of death, and the letters, the statements and the ledger entries carry on because nothing in the system knows.
The bill you cannot sue on
A bill that fails the statute's requirements founds no claim, and a retainer silent on interim bills leaves the clock unstarted.
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 joint retainer that stopped being joint
Two clients who wanted the same thing in March do not always want it in August, and the conflict check that cleared the file at the door does not run again.
The call your client made twice
A message taken at reception rarely reaches the matter file, so the time goes unbilled and nobody can show what was said when the client asks eighteen months later.
The money on account that ran out
Money paid on account runs out months before anyone reads the client ledger against the unbilled time on the same matter, and the client hears about it from the bill.
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 correspondence that never reached the file
When email never joins the matter record, supervisors, costs and disclosure all work from a partial file. A practical test for what your files hold.
The client you stopped acting for
Work stops on a matter months before anyone writes to the client, and the court record, the diary and the client account carry on as though the firm is still acting.
The documents deleted before anyone asked for them
A dispute recorded in March and proceedings issued in November, with the client's mail system deleting on a rolling cycle throughout. The instruction has to name the systems.
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.
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 original nobody produced
A boundary dispute turns on a conveyance the firm holds and cannot locate. Everything held in safe custody belongs on one register that has been tested.
The suppliers nobody wrote down
A firm changes costs draftsman and finds its papers in a personal cloud folder. Every outside organisation holding client data belongs on one list.
The morning the system did not come back
A firm's obligations do not pause when its case management system does, and few firms can name what falls due without it.
The competence you declared at renewal
Most firms sign the annual competence declaration and hold nothing behind it, when the evidence already sits in the matter files.
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 interpreter nobody booked
A hearing goes off because nobody booked an interpreter, and the file never recorded that the client needed one.
The right to cancel nobody mentioned
Retainers signed in a client's front room or agreed wholly by telephone carry a fourteen day right to cancel, and few files record whether the notice went out.
The client you never saw on their own
Capacity is presumed, specific to the decision and specific to the day, and the note written at the time is the only evidence that survives.
The budget you filed and never looked at again
A budget approved in March is read again only when the case is over, by which time the overspend is fixed and normally irrecoverable.
The introducer the client was never told about
Referral arrangements are signed once and reviewed never, leaving a firm unable to show that a client was ever told what the introduction was worth.
The letter asking for everything on the file
A former client asks for everything you hold about them. The month runs from the day the request lands anywhere in the firm, not the day you notice it.
The breach register with nothing in it
A register holding three entries for a whole year rarely means a clean firm. It far more often means the breaches were never recognised as breaches at the time.
The price you published and no longer charge
Your price page was accurate the week it was written. Your fees, your staffing and your timescales have moved since, and the page still makes a public claim about all three.
The interest nobody worked out
The interest policy most firms rely on was written when client money earned almost nothing, and the threshold in it has not been read since. The question surfaces when a client asks.
The bill nobody followed up
A bill goes out in February and is still unpaid in August, while the matter it belongs to runs on. It ages in the gap between the debtor report and the file.
The insurance form you fill in from memory
The proposal form asks what your firm knows about circumstances that might give rise to a claim, and in most firms four partners answer it from recollection.
The bank details that changed by email
An email arrives the day before completion with new bank details and a plausible reason. The verification that stops it has to be a step on the file, not a habit.
The conversation that was never written down
Two accounts of the same telephone call, two years on, and nothing written down at the time. What a court does with a disputed conversation, and what a note made the same day is worth.
The AI Act, and the questionnaire your client will send
The high risk rules moved to December 2027. The duties a firm meets first did not move at all.
The fortnight your fee earner was away
Leave is booked months ahead, and the cover list is still written from memory on the last afternoon.
The disbursement you paid and never recharged
A payment out is cash the firm has already spent, and nothing in the ordinary billing routine asks whether it ever came back.
The closed file that was still open
A matter is marked closed and the papers go to storage, and nothing in that sequence asks whether the file was fit to be closed.
The estimate you gave in January
An estimate given at the outset is a live figure, and a complaint about costs turns on whether you rewrote it while the client still had a choice.
The junior working late with no one to ask
The risk is not that a junior gets the point wrong at seven o'clock. It is that nobody ever learns what they did instead of asking.
The money that came from somewhere else
Identification and source of funds are settled when the file opens, and then the matter runs for months while the money behaves differently from the story the file records.
The client money nobody sent back
Dormant balances on closed matters agree to the penny with the bank, which is why the five weekly reconciliation never finds them.
The witness statement that left the building
A paralegal pastes a draft statement into a free chatbot to tidy the grammar, and the firm has no record it happened. What has to be in place before AI touches client papers.
The precedent nobody owns
Nobody owns the firm's precedents, so nobody knows when each was last read against current law. What that costs you, and the discipline that closes the gap.
The email that was already a complaint
A dissatisfied client tells you weeks before the complaint form arrives, in their own correspondence, and the reply that goes out next decides which way it turns.
The matter you opened before the checks were done
Conflict checks run against memory, identification taken but never verified, client care letters drafted and never sent. The gaps surface weeks later, at exchange or at audit, when fixing them costs most.
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 work you did in March and billed in August
Time recorded in March and billed in August is money the firm has earned and not asked for, and a bill that lands that late is the one the client queries.
The handover you get when a fee earner resigns
A fee earner resigns and the firm gets back files and a leaving note. What it loses is the position on every matter, held in one head and never written down.
The client who stopped hearing from you
Poor communication is the single most common reason clients complain about their solicitors, and the files that produce it are the quiet ones no one is watching.
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 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 file no one senior has read for months
What a judge sees at the end of the story, and how good AI assisted supervision closes the gap the SRA expects firms to mind.
The contract you signed before AI arrived
A long case management contract locks in your system, not your ability to put AI to work across the caseload.
The assistant built into your case management system, and where it stops
What the vendor assistants do well, and the line a file-scoped tool cannot cross.
The chargeable work that never reaches a time entry
At £200 an hour, one lost six minute unit a day runs to £44,000 a year in a ten fee earner firm, and the evidence sits in your systems already.
CMS or CRM, and why your firm keeps confusing the two
The two systems do different jobs, and the difference decides where you add intelligence and whether you have to migrate to do it.
The fixed fee you priced on a hunch
Fixed fees are commonly priced from memory, and the work done is rarely checked against the scope agreed, so the overrun shows up only as a work type that somehow never pays.
The client account review
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