The audit letter arrives
The regulator writes to say they will be visiting. The principal adviser pulls a handful of files and starts reading. One has no signed client care letter. One has no record of the identity check. One has attendance notes for the first meeting and nothing after. Everyone spends the next fortnight going through files, chasing signatures and writing up notes from memory.
The work was done. The problem is that the file does not show it, and nobody knew until someone looked.
Sampling hides the gaps
Most firms have a file review process, and it usually works like this: a supervisor picks a few files each month and checks them against a list. That catches habits, but it cannot tell you the state of every file. The ones not sampled may be in a much worse state, and there is no way to know without reading them all.
The checklist items are often simple facts: is there a signed client care letter, is there an identity record, is there a note of the advice given, is the fee agreement on file, has the file been closed properly. Many of those can be checked by looking at what documents and fields exist on the matter. But because the checklist is a Word document, it gets applied by hand, one file at a time.
What late discovery costs
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Gaps found only at review | Most files are never checked |
| Audit announced | Weeks of catch-up work across the firm |
| Notes written after the event | Records less reliable than contemporaneous ones |
| Signatures chased late | Awkward requests to clients long after the work |
| No firm-wide picture | Principal cannot see where the weak spots are |
Automatic checks built from your checklist
- We take your file review checklist and, with your principal or compliance lead, separate the items that can be checked from the file's contents from those that need a person to read and judge.
- The checkable items become rules: a document of a certain type exists and is signed, a field is filled, a note exists after each meeting in the diary, a closing letter exists on closed matters.
- The rules run every night across every open matter and recent closed ones, reading from your case management system's API or document store.
- Each matter gets a completeness score and a list of missing items, visible to the caseworker on the file and on their task list.
- Supervisors see a firm-wide dashboard of gaps by caseworker and by checklist item, so they can target training or support.
- The human-judgement items stay in a sampled review, now spending the reviewer's time on quality rather than on counting documents.
The checks confirm that items exist. They do not assess whether the advice or work was right, and they do not replace your obligations. Your firm decides what the checklist contains.
Audit-ready by default
Caseworkers see missing items while the matter is live, when fixing them is easy. The principal knows which files have gaps without reading them. When an audit is announced, the question is not "what state are our files in?" but "what does the dashboard say?", which is a much calmer conversation.
Reviewers spend their time on the parts of the file that need judgement, and training can focus on the specific habits the dashboard shows up.
New caseworkers learn the firm's standards faster, too, because the file tells them what is missing while they are still working on it, rather than months later in a review meeting.
Is this your firm before a visit?
- Only a sample of files is ever reviewed
- Audit preparation means weeks of catching up
- Signed documents are missing from some files
- Attendance notes are written long after meetings
- You cannot see file quality by caseworker