A partner picks up a file that has been quiet for a while and finds an offer to settle made eighteen months ago, on a claim then worth, say, £120,000. Nobody withdrew it. The medical evidence has improved since, the schedule of loss has been rewritten upwards, and the other side can accept that figure this afternoon.
Part 36 offers do not lapse of their own accord. An offer stays capable of acceptance until the party who made it withdraws it in writing, and the relevant period governs the costs consequences rather than the life of the offer. Every offer your firm has made and never withdrawn is still live somewhere across the caseload, and the same holds in reverse. An offer your opponent made, which nobody has weighed against the merits as they now stand, carries the risk that the client fails to beat it and picks up the costs consequences that follow.
Ask how many live offers the firm holds across its litigation files and the honest answer is that nobody has counted. Offers sit in email threads, in the note of a telephone call, in a fee earner's recollection of a mediation that did not settle. They rarely reach the matter record in a form anyone can search, so when the fee earner who made the offer moves department or resigns, the offer stays open and the knowledge of it leaves with them.
Two ways it goes wrong
The first is an acceptance nobody saw coming. An offer made when the claim looked weak is accepted after the evidence moves in the client's favour, and the client is bound to a figure no one would advise today. The question afterwards is not whether the offer was reasonable when it went out, but why it remained capable of acceptance a year and a half later.
The second is quieter and more common. An offer received sits unassessed while the file drifts and the merits move. If the client goes on to fail to beat it, the costs consequences apply to a period during which the firm had formed no view at all. Explaining that to a client is difficult, and explaining it to an insurer is worse.
Behind both sits a note nobody wrote. A solicitor has to advise the client on an offer, on its terms and on the costs exposure that refusing it carries, and the SRA's expectations around competent service and clear communication assume that advice can be demonstrated afterwards. The advice was given, the partner remembers giving it, and the file shows nothing. An attendance note written the same day would have closed it in a paragraph.
The register, and the review that keeps it honest
Build an offers register and derive it from the matter record rather than from anyone's memory. For each live offer it wants the matter, the party who made it, the date, its terms, whether the relevant period has run, and whether it has been withdrawn in writing. Withdrawal in writing closes an entry, settlement of the claim closes an entry, and nothing else does. A register that lets entries fall away for any other reason is worse than none, because it suggests the caseload has been checked.
Then review, tying it to events rather than to a date in the diary. Every live offer wants looking at again when the value of the claim moves, when new evidence lands, when a statement of case is amended, or when the fee earner's view of the merits changes. That review confirms the offer, prompts its withdrawal, or produces fresh advice, and whichever it produces belongs in writing to the client the same week. A spreadsheet does the job, and some firms keep one. The difficulty is the upkeep, because nobody owns it and the trigger for revisiting an offer is a change on a file the spreadsheet cannot see.
That is the gap the Bracton AI Assistant is built to close. It plugs into the case management or CRM system your firm already runs, LEAP, Clio, Proclaim or another, and reads every live matter overnight instead of the one file open in front of a fee earner. An offer standing on a matter whose value has moved is what that read puts in front of you the next morning, with the letter to the client drafted and waiting, because every output goes to a qualified fee earner for sign-off before it leaves the firm. It also drafts routine work, marks files that have gone quiet and recovers time that never reached a time entry. Hosting is in the UK and your client data is never used to train a model. A firm free to change system gets the assistant built into Bracton, the case and client management platform underneath it.
None of this means much until it runs on your own files. If you want to know how many offers across your caseload remain capable of acceptance this afternoon, and what your record shows about the advice given on each of them, book a client account review.