Professional Practice and Standards
Professional Practice and Standards covers how work is actually delivered: competence, diligence, undertakings, deadlines, supervision, billing transparency, and file closure. The exam tests whether you can spot a practice that is defensible commercially but below the standard the regulator expects.
Competence and diligence
- Competence is measured against the standard reasonably expected for the type of work, not against your personal experience. If you lack it, you obtain supervision, training, or decline.
- Diligence includes diary systems, escalation of slipping deadlines, and keeping the client informed of delay before the client discovers it.
- Contemporaneous file notes are the primary evidence of advice given and instructions received. Reconstructed notes carry little weight.
Undertakings
An undertaking is a binding promise, often given to another party or a court, that the firm will do or refrain from doing something. Key principles:
- It binds the firm, so it must be authorised internally and recorded centrally.
- It must be performed strictly and on time; "we tried" is no answer.
- It must never be given where performance depends on a third party you do not control.
Billing and file management
- Fee information must be clear before or at engagement and updated when scope changes.
- Time and disbursements must be recorded contemporaneously and be capable of being justified to the client.
- Files should be closed with a completion letter, return of original documents, and a retention decision.
Worked example
A legal executive gives an oral undertaking to opposing counsel to hold signed transfer documents "to their order". The supervising partner later releases the documents to the client without checking. The firm has breached the undertaking even though the client asked for the documents, because the promise ran to the other side. The correct sequence is: log the undertaking, obtain the other side's written release, then act.
Traps that cost marks
- Believing a client's later instruction overrides an undertaking given to a third party.
- Assuming supervision transfers liability away from the supervising lawyer.
- Relying on memory rather than file notes.
- Treating an oral undertaking as less binding than a written one.