Client meeting mode
You are talking to a person, not a screen
The same capture, a completely different output. Quiet by default — nothing scrolls, nothing pings, and nothing asks you to look down while your client is telling you something difficult.
The alert that matters most
When your client contradicts your own pleaded case
It usually happens in passing, in an answer to something else, months after the affidavit was settled. And it is the single most expensive thing that can be said in a consultation room, because the papers do not change to match it.
The file already holds what was pleaded, paragraph by paragraph, so today’s answer sitting badly against it is a difference between two recorded stances rather than a judgement somebody has to remember to make.
You are told quietly, at the time. What you do about it is entirely yours.
“I only saw the reconciliation after we were served.”
Pleaded — answering affidavit ¶ 31: signed on receipt, 2 August 2020
Bears on — issue 1 · prescription, and issue 2 · authority
Also relied on in — draft heads ¶ 12
While you listen
Five things noticed, nothing displayed
New facts, contradictions with the pleaded case, instructions given, undertakings made, and an open issue you have not raised.
New facts
Anything said that the file does not already hold, captured with who said it and when, ready to be proposed at the end rather than interrupting now.
Instructions given
What the client actually told you to do, in their words, with the time they said it.
Undertakings you make
The things promised in the room. These have dates attached, and they land in the obligations register.
An open issue you have not raised
Optional and discreet. If an issue is live and the conversation is ending without it, a nudge is available. Off by default.
When they leave
The attendance note, before the kettle has boiled
The attendance note that gets written at nine that night, if it gets written, is the single most commonly lost document in a practice.
After a client meeting, an explicit list of what the client said today against what is on the papers.
Every one of them is a proposal. Nothing is written to the file without you accepting it.
9 proposed facts — ranked by significance, most consequential first
1 conflict — today’s account against answering affidavit ¶ 31
4 instructions — in the client’s words, timestamped
2 undertakings — with the dates you gave them
Attendance note — drafted, in the firm’s format
The intake variant
First consultation, with no file to work from
A first consultation with no file at all builds the matter skeleton, names the probable causes of action, and surfaces prescription risk while the client is still in the room.
Limitation and prescription risk
Flagged immediately, in the room, while you can still ask the question that settles it. This is the one that does not wait.
The documents to ask for
A request list built from what the client referred to and could not produce, so the letter going out tomorrow asks for all of it, once.
A conflict-check list
Every name and entity mentioned, extracted for the register, before anyone commits to acting.
Then it is a matter
Accept the skeleton and the file exists. From there it behaves like any other file, and the consultation just had is already in it.
Recording a client
Consent is a protocol question, and the product treats it as one
Recording a consultation is not the same decision as recording a hearing, and it is your firm’s to make, not ours. It does not grant you leave to record. Asking the presiding officer remains counsel’s job.
What the product holds is your firm’s protocol, and it refuses to start capture in client meeting mode until consent is confirmed — with that confirmation logged under the name of the person who gave it and the person who took it.
Bring a consultation you have already had
Or a first consultation you remember going badly. Half an hour, and the note from that consultation is there to read, beside what would have been flagged in the room.