By Guy Dawson, CEO

It takes time and no one has any!

Lawyers were once bound to their precedents but much of the content was lifeless dross, added to increase the mystic and bamboozle the client. Over time we have been leaving behind our personal writing style, which typically included repetition and tautology, the lawyer’s favourite mistake, to be replaced by precedent packages. 

In a perfect world, a precedent would be drafted and created in advanced software that automated documents. The precedent would have fields and codes added to it so that the next time one needed to use it those details would ‘drop in’. The precedent would be given an easily identifiable code and stored in a system that allowed for ready accessibility by all members of the team at the exact moment in any matter when they might need it.

Typically however most of us cobble together a precedent from a variety of other precedents and then use it. When required again the trick is to remember the name of the matter in which it was created.

In reality it is but a handful of practices that keep a library of precedents organised by area of practice and subject matter which is readily available to all staff.

The system required is a matter type specific series of precedents organised in the sequence in which they are used and populated by the software in which they are created. Such systems are available and should be the first port of call for those practices that do not have the time and resources to provide their own.

There are of course limitations as for instance letters provided as part of precedent packages are often far too impersonal and do nothing to build the lawyer client relationship. Likewise, specific deeds contracts and agreements may not deal with all the issues at hand. But with a well organised library and some drafting skills the best of the practices of the past and present can be combined.

Systems allow us to make time.

Spend time on the system and time then grows and grows.