Deadlines and court dates: how to make sure none are missed

In a law firm there’s one kind of mistake that can’t be put right: the deadline that has passed. Everything else can be discussed, supplemented, tried again. A step taken out of time can’t.

And it’s almost never missed because someone didn’t know the rule. It’s missed because the date was on a note, in an email and in the head of one person who was juggling three cases that week. This article is about organisation — procedural time limits and how they’re calculated change, and must always be checked against the current text of the law in your jurisdiction.

Why a phone calendar isn’t enough

• It doesn’t link the date to the file — you see “Smith 10:00” without knowing what needs to be ready.
• It doesn’t know who in the firm has taken on the task.
• It doesn’t record why that date was entered or when the clock started running.
• It can be deleted or moved without a trace.
• And most critically: it never shows you all of a case’s deadlines together.

Which date to record

Not the expiry. The expiry is the day when it’s already too late. Every deadline goes in with three dates:

1. Trigger date — the event the time runs from (service, publication, notification), with the date of the document that proves it.
2. Internal target date — far enough ahead to absorb a surprise. This is the one that appears in the firm’s diary.
3. Actual expiry — written down, but as a safety limit, not as an appointment.

The gap between the second and the third is your breathing space. For a pleading, a week. For a simple filing, two days. Never zero.

Double reminders, two different roles

A single alert on the day of the deadline is useless — it arrives when you can no longer do anything. The setup that works is two alerts to two people: one to the fee earner handling the case when preparation needs to start, and one to the secretary on the internal target date, asking “done?”.

The reason is simple: the person who forgets a deadline won’t remember the reminder about it either. You need a second pair of eyes, not a second alarm clock.

The Monday check

Fifteen minutes at the start of every week, with one list in front of you:

• Hearings in the next thirty days, with what’s missing from each file.
• Deadlines expiring within fifteen days.
• Tasks past their internal target date that haven’t been marked as done.
• Cases with no next date at all — the most dangerous category, because they don’t show up anywhere until it’s too late.
• Adjournments from last week that don’t yet have a new hearing date entered.

The adjournment is where the system breaks

On the day of the adjournment everyone knows the new hearing date and nobody writes it down — because it’s obvious. Two months later it’s the one thing that isn’t recorded anywhere.

A rule with no exceptions: the new date is entered before you leave the court, and every task that depended on the old one moves with it. An adjournment isn’t one change; it’s five.

What stays on the file afterwards

Every deadline, once closed, leaves a line: what was done, when, by whom, with which document. That isn’t filing — it’s the answer to the “what’s happened on this case?” question your client will ask in a year, and the history a colleague will read if they have to take over while you’re away.

In LawPro hearings and deadlines hang off the case itself, not a separate calendar, and the reminder goes out to the fee earner automatically — so the Monday list is already made for you.

Conclusion

Record the trigger date and an internal target, not just the expiry. Put two people on every critical date. Enter the new hearing date before you leave the courtroom. And check every Monday which cases have no next step — that’s where the problems hide.