Five Quick Tips - File Management
Welcome to our Five Quick Tips Series! In this post, we will be giving you five quick tips on best practice for file management.
Use accurate descriptions when saving documents to help you find them later.
When you save documents electronically, it will assist you to re-name the documents with a short description to identify that document, for example "Letter from other party in relation to financial matters dated 21 August 2019". When you or your solicitor then need to refer back to letters you can do a system search for keywords or dates.
When indexing, consider how a solicitor would prefer documents to be arranged.
When you are indexing documents for your solicitor, think about how your solicitor would prefer them arranged. For example, in family law matters I sort the documents into categories (tax returns, bank statements, superannuation information etc) according to the same order that a solicitor would be completing information in a financial statement document.
If you aren't sure what your solicitor would prefer - just ask them!
Use tab dividers to identify or section out documents to find them easily later.
An index is useless if the documents are simply placed into a large binder folder without any way for the person looking at it to quickly find where those documents are placed within the folder. Even if documents are placed under a tab such as "bank statements", if the person has a number of different accounts it will be difficult to quickly locate those specific statements.
There is nothing worse for a solicitor than being in Court or in conference and having to spend a significant amount of time attempting to find something whilst your client or a Judge is waiting - the easier they can find documents, the better.
Try to attend to filing and indexing regularly, avoiding letting it pile up.
Among the many pressing tasks that legal support staff must attend to on a day to day basis, it can be easy to leave filing and indexing in a pile for when you have some spare time to complete it. However, allowing filing and indexing to pile up and create a backlog presents a number of challenges, including the accumulated time that it will take you to sort it when you do get time, as well as the fact that it will not be available on the hard copy file for your solicitor to refer to if required. If possible, you should try to do filing and indexing regularly. If you struggle finding time, it may assist to set aside time in your calendar once a day or once a week for this purpose.
Ensure indexing and filing is up to date before Court dates and conferences.
As mentioned above, it is sometimes difficult to keep on top of filing and indexing. If you are aware that your filing is not currently up to date, you should be mindful of any upcoming Court dates and conferences as filing and indexing will absolutely need to be done prior to these dates. Your solicitor will need documents from the file, and if they are not there you can get it can be quite embarrassing for your solicitor. You should also try to update files well in advance of these dates, rather than the day before or the morning of, as your solicitor will usually want to review the file in advance of the Court date or conference.
