Acting in a hurryJake was philosophical about the negligence claim against his firm.

'Well, these things happen', he told his insurers.

The claim arose from a missed time limit in unfair dismissal proceedings.

As Jake wrote in his claim report form, an application had not been filed with the Employment Tribunal within the three-month time limit.'My assistant solicitor faxed it to the tribunal on the last day', he explained, 'but she never checked that it had been received.

There seems to have been a problem with the fax on that day, and they didn't get it.

She's left now, and this won't happen again'.Understandably, Jake was looking at what had happened.

A time limit had been missed and he saw this as a matter of human error, because the fee-earner failed to ensure that the fax had gone through.

For a risk manager, that is not the whole story.

The next question is always 'why did it happen'?There were several potential causes for this claim.

Why was the application only being filed at the tribunal on the last possible day? Why was it being faxed?Had there been delay by the fee-earner, or had the client failed to give proper instructions to enable the application to be prepared earlier? If so, had a retainer letter been sent to warn the client about the time limit, inform him or her of the obligation to give proper instructions, and advise of the risks if this were not done?Was the solicitor too busy to give the matter full attention, or had she miscalculated the time for submitting the papers to the tribunal?Jake investigated in more depth, and came back to say that the practice had only been instructed at the eleventh hour.

His firm had no policy on 'vetting' clients - it was up to individual fee-earners to decide whether or not to act in a particular matter.Someone more experienced might well have declined to take this claim on, but in this instance Jake's assistant allowed her sympathy for the client to overcome the fact that she had insufficient time to prepare the application before the deadline.Jake's firm now has much closer supervision procedures, including a rule that junior staff must not enter into a retainer until the matter has been approved by a partner.l This column was prepared by the St.

Paul risk management team