The Owners' Manual - Issue 8 - Summer 2016

Legal Brief

By the Legal Dept.

Practical advice based on BL’s policies and procedures as well as things that might be helpful in your life outside BL.

For any employee who has attended the Legal Department’s orientation session, you have seen these words on one of the slides and you have heard me say them over and over. Why do I say them and why do I constantly harp on documentation? To give a real world example, we have a client who after repeated e-mails, letters and phone calls, still has not paid for the services we provided. Using our collections firm, we are now going to file a complaint against this client. Not only does the Project Manager have a signed contract (imperative) but also e-mail documentation showing that the client intended to pay. This kind of evidence is critical. Unfortunately, in the legal world, typically if it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen. Showing e-mails from the client promising to pay will be very helpful in front of a judge. This is not to say that picking up the phone and calling your client is not important. It is and is absolutely necessary to maintaining good client relations. But if a critical decision is made, something is approved over the phone, a change is made to your scope of work or the schedule of the next deliverable, you MUST follow that conversation up with a confirming e-mail which you then save to the project file. Having proper documentation when something is questioned or when things go wrong is always important in bolstering BL’s position.