By the way | The best laid plans

I generally have a plan when I rock up to work each morning. Even if there is no specific structure to my day, such as meetings or scheduled telephone conferences, I will compile a mental hit list of files which need some attention. I also methodically review the irritating little box of Outlook reminders which pops up cheerfully to greet me as I log in. I used to have a compulsion about keeping my reminders to fewer than six, as that's the maximum number which can be viewed without having to scroll down the box. These days however, I'm doing well if it's less than 20.

Then there is my physical to do pile, which consists of papers carefully arranged in order of priority to the right hand side of my desk. To the untrained eye, it may all look a little chaotic, but I know precisely what is going on, and I hope that someone else could find their way around it fairly easily too if I'm ever unexpectedly unable to make it into work.

What one cannot budget for within one's tidy mind map of the hours ahead, of course, is those inconsiderate people who don't realise that you're in the middle of a particular task and will go and ring your direct line number to discuss a totally unrelated file in respect of which they might have prepared to have a conversation, but you have not. I can't bear the sound of a ringing phone and will always leap to answer it rather than screen calls using voicemail or colleagues as shields, even when I'm irritated by the rude interruption to my concentration.

Shiny new toy

Emails are another form of communication which can parachute into your consciousness uninvited, as that bubble pops up in the bottom right hand side of your computer screen with the name of the sender together with the title and the first line or so of their message. Often, it will be something which can safely wait until later such as internal guidance on your firm's whizzy yet baffling new billing process, or a reminder that your Solicitors Journal article is due soon. At other times, however, you can feel compelled to open it immediately, dropping whatever you're doing in favour of the shiny new toy.

I experienced one such moment yesterday, having first received a phone call at 3.40pm from the claimants' solicitors who had just 20 minutes to serve court issued proceedings on my client before their clients' claim would be killed off forever, as the limitation period had already expired. There was an awkward silence after the solicitor asked whether I had any instructions, which I did not, and I felt rather as though I was in the verbal equivalent of a staring contest, with neither of us wanting to blink first.
Following a pregnant pause, he sighed and said that his instructions were not to serve proceedings if we would agree to bear our own costs to date. His confirmatory email shortly afterwards was a welcome distraction from the rather involved case in which I had by that time immersed myself, as it's always pleasant to be able to communicate the settlement of a claim on favourable terms to delighted clients.

I've actually had something of a successful week on the surrendering claimant front. I don't wish to gloat but it doesn't happen all that often, so is something to write home about. One of my cases saw claimants purchase a property over ten years ago which is subject to an agricultural tie, meaning that only people who work in farming or related industries are permitted to live there. They sued their conveyancing solicitors, claiming that the tie had not been drawn to their attention when they bought the house, and that it adversely affects the property's value by seriously restricting the size of the market into which they can make an onward sale.

The claimants' solicitors wrote a fairly high handed letter of claim, saying that their clients had no knowledge of the agricultural tie until they recently fell into financial difficulty and tried to sell the property. They therefore claimed to be inside the limitation period to bring their claim due to their belated date of knowledge.

Victory

When I approached the contact for my client firm, which no longer trades, I was informed that due to the passage of time and storage issues, the file had long since been destroyed. It wasn't looking all that great from a kickass defence point of view. However, undeterred our team's trainee headed to the local council's website to see what she could learn about the property and its rather unusual tie. Guess what she found on there? A publicly available document with both claimants' names and signatures on dating from just a few months after they had bought the property in 2003 in which they applied to remove the agricultural tie of which they were now claiming to have had no knowledge before 2011. Gotcha!

One hugely satisfying letter later (which I graciously allowed our detective trainee to draft, since it was really her victory) the claimants' solicitor called to ask whether we are prepared to forget about the attempted claim and simply walk away, once again with each side bearing its own costs.

Maybe if I keep plugging away at my to-do list, all of my cases will conclude like that.

Copyright & permissions