Supervision of Central Office Lawyers
Central Office Lawyers must be adequately supervised by a lawyer with 10 years PQE and expertise in the area of work the Central Office Lawyer has been asked to undertake. Supervision should be on a risk-based approach: the more the risk, the closer the supervision. You must block out a suitable amount of time for supervision, especially around the likely beginning and end of the task. If you are going to be uncontactable, either reschedule the task or arrange for an alternate senior lawyer with the relevant experience and PQE to supervise or delegate the task to a lawyer with at least 5 years PQE, who will need less supervision.
Tasks such as preparing bundles, serving proceedings and producing reports are higher risk and require extra supervision. Responsibility for the matter and the final work product remains with the instructing lawyer at all times.
You must provide clear and complete instructions to the Central Office Lawyers you use and it is a good idea for larger tasks to check in on progress and the comprehension of your instructions regularly.
When instructing a Central Office Lawyers to prepare a bundle you must identify the source of constituent documents, explain how documents should be organised and indexed, and draw attention to any specific procedural or court requirements. The Central Office Lawyers should not be expected to determine independently which documents should be included or excluded from a bundle. The final version must be checked by the supervising lawyer before it is filed/served etc. You must leave adequate time for this. Save where logistically impossible due to external uncontrollable factors, all work should be completed at least one clear working day before the filing, hearing or other relevant deadline.
Where bundling instructions are received less than one clear working day before the applicable deadline, you must work closely in tandem with the Central Office Lawyer checking the work as it progresses and you must take an enhanced interest in insuring it is completed in time. If you are not contactable, the Central Office Lawyer will be asked to loop in another senior lawyer to supervise their work, and their time will be charged to the file at their default rate.