An order arrives, and someone opens Outlook
A sealed directions order arrives by email from the court. The fee earner reads it, or means to. Disclosure by one date, witness statements by another, experts' reports, a pre-trial checklist, a trial window. They or their secretary type each date into Outlook, sometimes into the practice management system as well, often only one of the two.
If the fee earner is on holiday when it lands, it may sit unread. If they miscount a date or skip one line of a long order, there is nothing to catch it.
Why dates slip through
Orders are not written for data entry. Dates are expressed in different ways: a fixed date, a number of days after another event, 'by 4pm on', or a date that depends on another party doing something first. Varied orders later replace some dates and not others. A person transcribing them is doing careful work under time pressure, usually alone.
And the result often lives in a personal calendar. If that fee earner leaves or is off sick, the dates go with them unless someone thinks to check.
| Weak point | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Single person transcribes the order | No second check on a miscount or missed line |
| Dates in a personal calendar | Not visible to supervisor or cover |
| Varied orders | Old dates stay in the diary alongside new ones |
| Order arrives while fee earner is away | Nobody reads it in time |
What a missed date costs
A missed direction can lead to applications, costs consequences and damage to the client's case, and it is one of the more common reasons firms end up talking to their insurers. Even a near miss means a partner's afternoon spent on an urgent application and an awkward call to the client.
The anxiety costs something too. Supervisors who do not trust the diary end up checking every file by hand.
How we build date capture with a second check
- Capture: orders arriving in the court correspondence inbox, or saved to the matter, are picked up and linked to the matter by case number and party names.
- Proposed dates: a language model reads the order and lists every date, deadline and task it can find, quoting the paragraph each one came from. Relative dates are shown with the working it used, marked for checking.
- Two-person confirmation: the fee earner confirms or corrects each proposed date, and a second person (a supervisor or a designated diary manager) confirms too, as your firm's policy requires.
- Into the key dates: confirmed dates go into your practice management system's key dates or tasks, and into the relevant Outlook calendars, with reminders on the intervals you choose.
- Varied orders: when a new order replaces old dates, the tool shows which existing dates it appears to affect, so they are updated rather than duplicated.
- Unread alert: if an order has not been reviewed within the time your firm sets, the supervisor is told.
The tool proposes; people confirm. It never marks a date as final on its own, and it quotes the source paragraph so checking is quick.
What the diary looks like afterwards
Every date from an order is in the matter's key dates, not just someone's calendar, and each one shows who confirmed it and which paragraph it came from. Cover fee earners and supervisors see the same dates. An order that arrives while the fee earner is away gets noticed.
The second check becomes a short confirmation screen rather than a second person re-reading the whole order.
A quick self-check
- Dates from orders are typed into Outlook by one person.
- Key dates are not reliably recorded in your practice management system.
- Nobody routinely double-checks dates transcribed from orders.
- Varied orders leave old dates sitting in diaries.
- Supervisors cannot easily see upcoming deadlines across a team.