How do you maintain an advocate’s diary?
Keep every date with its matter, write adjournments in on the day, let the whole team see the diary, and remind whoever holds a deadline before the day comes.
An advocate’s diary is the record of where the practice has to be and what it has to have done. When it works, nobody thinks about it. When it fails, the client often finds out first. Most diaries fail in the same few ways, and each one has a plain fix.
Keep each date with its matter
A date on its own is half a fact. “Thursday, 9am” tells you to be somewhere. It does not tell you which client, which court, which file to carry or what happened last time. Write every date against the matter it belongs to, with the client’s name and the reference your practice uses for the file. Then anyone who opens the matter sees what is next, and anyone who looks at the day sees which matters it touches.
It also makes the diary answer the questions you actually get. When a client asks when they are next in court, the answer should be one look at their matter, not a hunt through a week of pages.
Write adjournments in on the day
Few dates in a practice are set once. A hearing is adjourned, a mention moves, a filing is put back by agreement. The risk lives in the gap between the moment a date changes and the moment the diary does. The advocate in court knows the new date. The office does not, until somebody tells it.
Make it a rule that the new date goes in on the day it is given, by whoever was in the room, before they move on to the next thing. Note why it moved, too. A line such as “adjourned at the request of the other side” saves a long conversation later with a client who wants to know what happened.
Let the whole team see it
A diary kept in one person’s book, or on one person’s phone, works only while that person is present and well. When they travel, fall ill or move on, the practice loses its memory. A diary the whole team can see means a colleague can cover a hearing at short notice and already know the matter. It also means the head of the practice can see the coming week without asking five people.
Seeing is not the same as everyone editing everything. Be clear about who keeps each matter’s dates up to date, so that every change has an owner.
Remind whoever holds the deadline
Every date needs a name beside it: the person responsible for being there or getting it done. That person should be reminded before the day, early enough to act on it, not on the morning itself.
A short look at what is due, held at the same time every week, catches most of what a reminder misses. Go through the coming week matter by matter, confirm who holds each date, and settle any cover before it is needed. Treat it as part of the work, not a meeting about the work.
Where Herald fits
Herald is a workspace for a practice. Each matter keeps its client, its dates and its papers together. The next date on each matter sits where the whole team can see it, with one list of what is due this week across the practice. You can assign a client to whoever is taking them on, and everyone can see who has which client.
Herald is made for practices in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya, and is opening to a small number of founding firms.