You missed one deadline last year. That number cannot tell you anything.
One event in 138 is too rare to trend. It cannot distinguish a well-run diary from a lucky one, and it will not move measurably however much you improve. The number that will is how close the other 138 came.
Slack remaining when each date was met
138 deadlines over the last twelve months. The left of this chart is the part that becomes a claim.
- Same day or next 7
- 2–3 days 11
- 4–7 days 19
- 8–14 days 26
- 15–30 days 34
- More than 30 41
18
met with three days or less
13%
of everything on the register
0.25
misses you would expect in a quarter
That third figure is the whole argument. At the current rate a quarter with no misses and a quarter with one are the same quarter, statistically, and a firm managing to that number is managing to noise.
Why margin is the number
The last of these is a limit on what anybody selling this can honestly claim, including us.
- Margin moves before misses do
- 18 of 138 deadlines were met with three days or less. That number can be halved and measured within a quarter; the miss count cannot move at all in a quarter without being luck.
- The distribution has a shape worth reading
- A firm with a fat left tail is not unlucky, it is running late systematically. A firm with a flat distribution is fine and does not know it, which is its own problem at renewal.
- One miss a year is not a trend
- At the current rate you would expect about 0.25 misses in a quarter. Reading a quarter with zero as an improvement, or a quarter with one as a crisis, is reading noise.
- Nobody can count what was prevented
- The strongest claim a system like this could make is unmeasurable by construction. Anyone quoting you prevented-claim figures has invented them, including us if we ever do.
Four ways a date gets missed
None of them are somebody forgetting. All of them are structural, and the first is the most common by a distance.
- 01 The date was never derived
- Nobody read the clause that created it. This is the largest single cause and it is why derived dates and diarised dates are separated everywhere on this site.
- 02 It was on one person's list
- Held by the associate who left, or the partner who was on leave. A deadline visible to one person is a deadline with a single point of failure.
- 03 The trigger moved and nothing recounted
- An amendment changed the notice period and the diary entry did not follow. The date stayed confident and became wrong.
- 04 Everyone assumed somebody else had it
- Shared responsibility for a date is no responsibility for it. Every entry needs one name against it, and the name has to be a person rather than a team.
What this does not cover
The second is permanent. No system reaches an obligation that was never written down.
- Margin is a proxy, not the thing
- A deadline met on the last day is not a failure. It is a warning that the process has no slack in it, and treating warnings as failures is how a register gets gamed.
- It will not stop a deadline nobody entered
- Dates derived from documents in the matter are covered. An obligation created in a phone call and never written down is invisible here and always will be.
- Tightening margin costs something
- Acting earlier means serving notices you might not have needed and doing work before it was strictly required. That cost is real and it is smaller than the alternative.
- This is not insurance advice
- Whether any of it affects a premium is a question for your broker. It is on the page because deadlines are where the claims are, not because we can price them.
The other outcomes
Keep the file in the Kingdom
Where documents go, and where they do not.
Cut review time
The first pass on a document set.
Draft in both languages
Arabic and English that agree with each other.
Bring research in-house
Stop paying counsel to look things up.
Get juniors productive
The precedent bank a first-year does not have.