Creating a Matter Opening Checklist

Most matters that go wrong were compromised in the first few days, not in the hearing room. A limitation period no one calculated, a conflict no one cleared, an instruction everyone assumed but nobody wrote down: these are opening-week failures that surface months later, when they are expensive to fix and awkward to explain to the client. A matter opening checklist is the cheapest insurance a chamber or firm can carry, because it forces the boring questions to be answered while the answers still cost nothing.

Fix the parties and the scope in writing

Start by pinning down who the client actually is. In a company matter, name the entity, the group it belongs to, and the individual giving instructions on its behalf. Then record every other party, so the conflict search has something to run against. Set out the scope in the client's words and yours: what work is being taken on, what is expressly excluded, and what the client believes will happen that you have not agreed to do. A scope written down on day one is what you reach for when the instruction quietly expands three months later.

Run conflicts and identity before substantive work

No draft, no research, no advice goes out until identity and conflicts are cleared through the firm's own process. The checklist should not pretend to replace that process; it should refuse to let the matter advance without it. Capture:

• confirmed identity of the client and the signatory
• the full list of counterparties and connected persons searched
• the result of the conflict check and who signed it off
• any information barrier or consent that the result requires

Treat a box ticked in a case-management tool as a reminder that the check must happen, never as the clearance itself.

Calculate and record the first deadlines

The most dangerous dates are the ones that exist before anyone has opened the file properly. Identify any limitation period, statutory time limit, or looming hearing at intake, calculate it deliberately, and record how it was worked out. Note which dates are firm and which are provisional, and assign each one an owner who is responsible for the next step. A deadline with no name against it is a deadline waiting to be missed.

Log what you received and what you are missing

Record every document the client has handed over, with the date received and the form it arrived in, and keep the originals untouched. Just as importantly, list what you still need. A short, explicit gap list at opening turns a vague sense that the file is incomplete into a concrete request you can send the client the same week, before memories fade and documents wander off.

Name the responsible lawyer and the review point

Every matter needs one person who owns it and a moment when someone senior looks at how it began. Record who holds the file, who supervises, and when the opening will be reviewed. This is also where a purpose-built workspace earns its place: keeping intake, parties, key dates, and the document list in one matter record, rather than scattered across email and notepads, means the next person to touch the file can see how it was set up without a handover conversation.

Done properly, the checklist takes half an hour and reads like common sense. Its value shows up later, when a limitation question, a conflict challenge, or a scope dispute arrives and the answer is already sitting in the opening record, dated and attributed. The discipline is unglamorous, but it is the difference between a matter that starts on solid ground and one that spends its life recovering from its own beginning.