Law Office Management: Files, Diary, Accounts and Clients

In one line

A law office is a system for making sure that every file has an owner, every date is in a diary, and the client's money is never mixed with the office's.

In exam wording: law office management comprises the organisation of case files and records, the maintenance of a cause and limitation diary, the keeping of client accounts in accordance with the Bar Council of India Rules, conflict checking, engagement and fee terms, and the supervision of staff and juniors.

Who may run one: the statutory frame

Three sections of the Advocates Act 1961 define who is in the office at all.

Section 29: subject to the Act and the rules, there shall, from the appointed day, be only one class of persons entitled to practise the profession of law, namely, advocates.

Section 30: every advocate whose name is entered in the State roll shall be entitled as of right to practise throughout the territories to which the Act extends, (i) in all courts including the Supreme Court; (ii) before any tribunal or person legally authorised to take evidence; and (iii) before any other authority or person before whom such advocate is by or under any law entitled to practise.

Section 33: except as otherwise provided in the Act or in any other law, no person shall be entitled to practise in any court or before any authority or person unless he is enrolled as an advocate under the Act.

Section 49 is the power under which the Bar Council of India makes the rules that govern the office, including, by section 49(1)(c), the standards of professional conduct and etiquette to be observed by advocates.

Read section 33 against section 30 and the practical consequence for an office appears at once. Clerks, paralegals, article assistants, interns and typists are not advocates. They may prepare, draft, index, file, diarise and organise. They may not practise, and they may not appear. Chapter 780 takes up what happens when an office lets them.

The file

The unit of work in a law office is the file, and the discipline is that a file must be intelligible to somebody who has never seen it. That is not a counsel of perfection; it is the condition under which an office survives a person leaving, falling ill, or being briefed at short notice.

One matter, one file, one number. The file number is how the matter is referred to in the diary, the accounts and the correspondence.

What a file contains, kept in separate parts:

1. The index and the file note. The first page. What the matter is, who the parties are, the court and case number, the stage, the next date, and what is to be done next.
2. Client papers, as received, unaltered, with the date of receipt. Originals separately, and receipted.
3. Pleadings and court documents, in order.
4. Correspondence, chronological.
5. Research and drafts, marked as drafts.
6. The engagement letter and fee record.
7. Accounts, or a cross-reference to the client account ledger.
8. Attendance notes: what the client said, what advice was given, on what date. Below.