The letter arrived on Friday. You heard on Wednesday
A decision comes back as a refusal. It goes to the client's email, not yours. The client is upset and does not forward it for a few days. When it does reach your firm, it lands in a caseworker's inbox while they are on leave. By the time someone reads it properly, a good chunk of the time available to respond has gone.
Nobody did anything wrong in isolation. The problem is that there was no single point where the firm registered that a decision had arrived, recorded the date, and started the clock.
Why deadlines hide
Decision letters are rarely received in one predictable place. Some go to the representative, some to the applicant, some to both. The date that matters may be the date on the letter, the date of receipt or the date of service, and working that out for a given case is a legal judgement for your advisers, not an administrative one.
Firms tend to rely on the caseworker to diarise deadlines manually. That works when the caseworker is at their desk and the letter comes straight to them. It fails at the edges: holidays, staff changes, letters forwarded by clients, and weeks when several decisions arrive at once.
The cost of a late diary entry
| Gap | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Letter reaches client first | Days lost before the firm knows |
| Letter sits in one inbox | Nobody else can see a decision has arrived |
| Deadline worked out late | Less time to prepare whatever comes next |
| No escalation | An unactioned decision goes unnoticed |
| No record of receipt | Difficult to show when the firm knew |
This is the kind of failure that turns into a complaint or a claim, because the client experiences it as the firm dropping the ball at the worst possible moment.
A decision intake with a clock attached
- All decisions go to one intake point: a dedicated mailbox for correspondence to the firm, and a simple upload link your clients are told to use the moment they receive anything.
- Each item is logged with the date and time it arrived at the firm, and matched to the client matter by name, reference and date of birth, with uncertain matches sent to a person.
- Dates in the letter are extracted and shown next to the original for a person to confirm. Nothing is diarised from extraction alone.
- Once a named adviser confirms the relevant dates, the deadlines your firm sets are added to the matter and to the firm's central diary in Microsoft 365 or Google Calendar.
- The client receives an acknowledgement that the firm has the letter and that their adviser will be in touch, with no comment on the decision itself.
- Any decision not reviewed by an adviser within the internal time your firm sets escalates to a supervisor, and then to a partner.
We deliberately keep the judgement out of the automation. The system makes sure every decision is seen, logged and timed. What it means, and what the deadline is, is your advisers' call.
Nothing arrives without the firm knowing
Every decision is on a single list the day it reaches you, with a named person responsible. Holidays no longer hide letters. Supervisors see unreviewed decisions without asking. And the firm has a clear record of when each letter arrived and who dealt with it.
Clients benefit from the acknowledgement as well. A short message saying the firm has the letter and an adviser is looking at it does a lot to calm someone who has just read bad news.
Signs you need this
- Decisions sometimes reach the firm days after the client received them
- Deadlines are diarised by individual caseworkers
- There is no central list of decisions received
- Letters have sat unread during a caseworker's absence
- You could not easily show when a letter first reached the firm