The phone that never stops
A family law fee earner starts the day with a plan to draft a statement. By eleven they have had four calls from clients asking whether anything has happened. Usually the honest answer is 'we are waiting for the other side' or 'the court has not listed it yet'. Each call takes ten minutes, needs an attendance note, and breaks their concentration.
The secretary takes messages, which means callbacks, which means more interrupted time. The clients are not being difficult. They are anxious and they cannot see any progress.
Why clients need to ask
Legal matters have long quiet stretches: waiting for a hearing date, a reply to a letter, a valuation, an expert's report. From inside the firm that is normal. From the client's side, silence looks like nobody is working on their case.
Fee earners know they should update clients regularly, but updating when nothing has changed feels pointless, and writing an update takes as long as taking the call. So the update never goes, and the call comes instead.
| Matter type | Typical quiet period |
|---|---|
| Family finances and children | Waiting for hearing dates and the other side's disclosure |
| Probate and estate administration | Waiting for asset holders and valuations |
| Civil litigation | Waiting for directions, the other side or experts |
| Employment | Waiting for tribunal listing or the respondent's response |
What the update calls cost
The obvious cost is fee earner time that often cannot be billed, or should not be. The less obvious one is that frequent interruptions make everything else slower. Clients who feel ignored also complain more, and a surprising share of complaints are about communication rather than the outcome.
Secretaries and reception spend a large part of their day taking and passing on these messages too.
How we build proactive matter updates
- Milestones from your system: we map the stages and key events your practice management system already records for each matter type (letter sent, reply received, hearing listed, grant issued).
- Triggers: when a milestone is reached, or when a matter has had no client contact for a period you set, an update is prepared.
- Plain-language draft: the update is drafted from your templates in plain English: what has happened, what you are waiting for, and what the next step is. It avoids anything that would amount to advice.
- Fee earner approval: the fee earner sees the draft in a queue and approves, edits or skips it. Nothing goes to a client without that approval, unless your firm chooses to allow a template-only update for particular milestones.
- Client view: optionally, a secure page shows the client the current stage, what the firm is waiting for, and documents shared with them, updated from the same data.
- Record: every update sent is saved to the matter as correspondence, so the file is complete.
What the fee earner's day looks like afterwards
Clients hear from the firm before they think to call, and the message tells them what they actually want to know: what is happening and what comes next. Fee earners spend a few minutes approving updates instead of hours on the phone. The calls that do come in are the ones that need a conversation.
Reception and secretaries take fewer 'any news?' messages, and the attendance notes for those calls disappear with them.
Signs your clients need more updates
- Fee earners take several update calls a day.
- Most of those calls end with 'we are still waiting'.
- Complaints mention poor communication more than outcomes.
- Your matter stages are recorded in your system but clients never see them.
- Updates are only sent when a fee earner remembers.