Tutorial 2_PPI_UPP4712_2019_2020_JMA_YMY

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Question 1
Carelessness can lead not only to the loss of time but also to the loss of your entire
practice. Discuss
Answer :
● Definition
○ Carelessness refers to the lack of awareness during a behaviour that can
result in unintentional consequences or mistake.
○ In simple terms; carelessness is an act caused by lack of care.
○
● How does carelessness affect your practice as a legal practitioner?
○ Failure to provide a more professional service to the client may not only
fail to wins the client's heart but also may cause the client to lose their
case due to one’s carelessness
○ May result in giving the wrong advice and may even take on cases that
the client has no hope of winning.
○ Failure to organize a neat and tidy filing system in the firm may result in
loss or misplacement of important documents that may affect the outcome
of the case.

Question 2
How to managed your time well at the meetings (meeting with client) and at the Court
before your case is being call.
Answer:
● Meeting with clients
○ Prepare for Your Meeting
■ Prepare for the meeting by having all of your documents drafted
with copies for the client to review. If you’ve asked the client to
provide information, make a list of what you asked for when you
contacted the client so you can check off the information as the
client provides it to you.
○ Prepare an Agenda for Your Meeting
■ Clients like to stray from the point as they seek to tell you details
and the story of their lives. An agenda helps prevent wasted time
 by focusing the meeting only on those key points that need to be
addressed at this time.
○ Give the Client a Summary of the Meeting and an Action List
■ Prepare a short summary of the key points as well as an action list.
Include any documents you’re requesting or action you’re asking
the client to take in the action list.
■ Set a follow-up date for the client to return the documents and/or
information to your office.
■ Follow up with your client about a week later to confirm the client is
working on the matters if the deadline is approaching and you
haven’t heard from them.

● At the Court before case being called

○ Preparation of important documents in a neat and organized manner
will help smoothen the case hearing
■ Organized documents will help one be calm in court and not waste
any time searching for any missing document at the moment.
■ Prepare copies for yourself, the other side, and the judge. Keep the
originals in a separate folder. On the copy of each document,
highlight the important points that you wish to make using each
document. During the trial, this will help you to find the information
on each document when you need to point it out to the judge or the
other side.
■ If you have more than 3 or 4 documents, you may wish to put small
labels on the side of each document so you can find it more easily
when they are in a binder or folder.
■ For single documents, staple them together or simply clip related
documents together.

Question 3
How to prevent time theft at the law office? Discuss
Answer:
Time management is very important in ensuring the smooth running of a firm. It is
crucial for a lawyer as well as his or her staff in the law firm to always be efficient and
productive in order to ensure all the works can be done within the time it needs to be
completed. A law firm will deal with tons of works to complete within a short period of
time. Client will insist on settling their case quickly and will throw the blame on the firm if
unreasonable delay has been caused to them. Therefore, it is important that time has to
be appreciated for the greater productivity which in turn will result in greater profits and
job satisfaction.
Time theft is a term used to describe the ways the time is stolen from an individual or an
organization. It occurs due to the following
1. Personal habits of an individual
2. The habits of those around you/ your employees/ the employers
3. The organizational culture of the firm
Some of the time theft factors are perfectionism, impatience, confidence,
carelessness, forgetfulness and knowledge. For example, we lawyers must ensure that
all the works are done correctly without any mistake but this does not mean we have to
be too perfectionist as this will cause us to spend unnecessary time dealing with our
perfectionism. For example, there are cases where the next new paragraph is only one
line before it enters the second page. Generally, it will cause no harm to the work we
are dealing with as it will not cause the work to be rejected just for that matter. However,
some of us, due to our perfectionism, cannot see that one line to only be there and
might want to adjust it to be in the second page so that it will looks neater. Other than
that, confidence will also cause us to spend more time than needed. This is because
when we are too confident, say that we are so used to deal with this matter, we tend to
take things for granted by not doing double check on the document. For example, a firm
that has been a panel to a bank will be so familiar with the bank letter of offer for loan.
They tend to not spend their time on the long instruction in the offer letter thinking that
the same applies to every loan application. However, there are situations where the
instruction will be different due to the nature of the land in question. When this was
overlooked, it will cause problem when the registration has already completed. At the
end of the day, the bank will only blame the lawyers for not checking the letter of offer
as they would assume the lawyers must have been aware of the instruction. This will
cause the matter to be redo again and it will take more time before the client can finally
have the title for him or her to deal with for any other matter.
Carelessness is no doubt another factor of time theft. In practice usually all the
required documents are already prepared left with to insert the details for different client.
In conveyancing especially, all the bank documents, the sale and purchase agreement
are readily available it is just that the lawyer will need to change the details that suit the
client. Most of the time the information needed will be in repeat for the other documents.
For example, all details needed for the bank facilities agreement are also needed to be
filled in the charge annexure and the sales and purchase agreement. The borrower
name, the address, the title number etc will be the same and used for all other
documents. This will involve a lot of copy and paste process as the same information is
the same and it is just that the same need to be transferred to other documents. Here is
where the carelessness will always stop the work from being completed quickly. Once
the lawyer or the clerk has wrongly inserted the title number for example for the first
document, this will lead to the other documents to have the same wrong title number as
well. If they are not careful in doing the copy and paste work, they will see themselves
correcting the title number and start all over again to insert the correct title number. It is
clear that this will lead to unnecessary waste of time.
In conclusion, we can see how important for the firm to have its lawyers and
members to always manage their time well so as to avoid delay in completing the work.
We must work fast but at the same time we must make sure that no unnecessary
mistakes are done along the process that will just defeat the purpose of doing the work
fast as we will need to start again and that means we have wasted a lot of time there.
Lawyers must always be cautioned in completing the works as a simple mistake will
cause a lot to the firm’s reputation as well as it might cause the firm to spend more
when they need to reprint the agreement or bear all the cost for the mistakes they
made.

Question 4
Give 2 suggestions to ensure the organization diary is managed effectively
Answer:
Organisation diary or diary management is important to ensure that all the
matters that should be completed are completed within time. It is normal that in firm, we
will have categories of work to deal with. There are works that are urgent and need to
be prioritise in completing them and also there are works that are less urgent where it
will allow for more time to complete them. Law firm will have junks of works and the only
possible way to ensure it will remain manageable is by having organization diary. This is
important so that the firm’s daily or weekly schedule will remain in order and not
disturbed.
In order to ensure that the organization diary is managed effectively, it is
recommended that the firm comes out with 2 diaries which are the office diary and the
lawyers diary. This is important because the work of a lawyer is not necessarily done by
the lawyer themselves but most of the time assisted by the clerk. Therefore, lawyers will
always need to liaise with the clerk who is helping him in a particular case to make sure
that both of them will get the work done within time it need to be completed. Office diary
will record the same thing as the lawyers diary so that the staff can always be in check
and can remind the lawyers on certain urgent works that need to be done.
It is also important that the organization diary to be designed in many columns or
to be labelled with different colour according to the level of urgencies of the matters. For
example, if the matter is urgent and need to be completed very soon, then it can be
labelled red as well as adding another column for the clerk and the lawyer in charge of
the case. If the matter is mild in terms of urgencies, it can be labelled with a yellow
sticker and if it’s not urgent so as to mean that they will have more time to prepare it,
then it can be labelled with a green sticker. Deadline is also important to be included in
the organization diary apart from the labelled colour sticker. Every new work or case
coming in must be quickly recorded so as to avoid from any work not being recorded
due to forgetfulness.
Law firm management is very important as failure to do it will tarnish the law
firm’s reputation when the client will start to talk bad about the firm in terms of the time
they took to settle a case, the management of files etc to their friends. One must
remember that apart from this organization diary which is to ease the firm’s running
daily, it is also crucial for the client to see how manageable and efficient the firm is in
meeting their deadline as promised to the client. The faster, the more efficient is the
running of the firm, the high chance that the client will start be talking about how well the
firm deals with the client and eventually will invite more clients to come to the firm.