A spreadsheet on the shared drive
Your firm has an undertakings register. It is a spreadsheet, or a tab in one, and every fee earner is supposed to add a row whenever they give an undertaking and update it when it is discharged. Some do, carefully. Some remember a week later. Some give undertakings in the body of an email and do not think of them as undertakings at all.
When a supervisor asks for a list of open undertakings for a departing fee earner, someone has to read through months of sent items to be sure.
Why the register is always incomplete
The register is separate from the work. Undertakings are given in letters, emails, completion correspondence and phone calls confirmed in writing, and the register is somewhere else entirely. Adding to it is an extra step, and extra steps get skipped when people are busy.
Discharge is even harder to track. The fee earner knows the undertaking was met, but updating the spreadsheet is an afterthought, so the register fills with entries that look open but are not, which makes people trust it less.
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Logging is a separate step | Undertakings never make it into the register |
| Discharge not recorded | Register shows stale open entries |
| Undertakings in informal emails | Given without anyone realising |
| Register not linked to matters | Open undertakings missed at file closure |
What a missed undertaking costs
Failing to meet an undertaking is treated seriously, and it is personal to the individual who gave it as well as the firm. Even where nothing goes wrong, an incomplete register means a supervisor or compliance lead cannot show they have oversight, and file reviews find gaps.
The spreadsheet itself becomes a burden: long, unreliable and checked mostly in a panic.
How we build a matter-linked register
- Register inside the workflow: each undertaking is a record on the matter, with who gave it, to whom, what it requires, when and the source document.
- Spotting candidates: outgoing letters and emails on each matter are scanned for wording your firm identifies as indicating an undertaking. Matches are shown to the fee earner, who confirms whether to log them.
- Quick logging: confirming creates the register entry with the source document attached. Fee earners can also add one manually in a few fields.
- Tracking to discharge: each open undertaking has a review date. The fee earner is prompted to mark it discharged with evidence, or to update the expected date.
- Supervisor view: supervisors and your compliance lead see all open undertakings by team, by age and by fee earner.
- Closure and leavers: a matter cannot pass the closure checklist with an open undertaking, and a departing fee earner's open undertakings are listed for reallocation.
The detection is deliberately cautious. It asks the question rather than deciding, because what counts as an undertaking depends on the wording and context.
What the register becomes
Instead of a spreadsheet that everyone suspects is incomplete, the firm has a list that is built from the actual correspondence and kept up to date by prompts. Supervisors can answer 'what is outstanding?' in a minute. Leavers' undertakings are handed over rather than discovered.
Fee earners also get a gentle reminder when they have phrased something as an undertaking without meaning to, which some find the most useful part.
You might need this if
- Your undertakings register is a spreadsheet updated by hand.
- It contains old entries that are probably discharged but not marked.
- Undertakings are sometimes given in emails without being logged.
- Checking a leaver's undertakings means searching their sent items.
- File closure does not check for open undertakings.