Someone at the LAA (then LSC) took great umbrage last year when I suggested that their auditors had been issued with an instruction not conclude a visit without leaving a Contract Notice. (This despite the context being a humourous one where I also used the line “We have got a CN and we don’t even have a contract!”)
And yet recent experience tends to suggest this. It’s a tactical approach unlikely to have developed organically and, frankly, I would be astonished if there had not been a direction issued to initiate its use. To any reasonable observer a single error, on a single file, from a targeted sample cannot represent a “breach of contract”. Trying to relate this experience to upset and nervous lawyers is not always easy – hence the attempt at humour.
As we have often said we are something of a weather vein on these issues. You will not be surprised then that we are having similar feelings about the most recent turn of events; not just a CN but an early threat of a “sanction”, even when there is absolutely no basis contractual basis for that proposed. When this has occurred in each of our last 3 client enquiries, it is difficult to put it down to coincidence.
Of course, as ever, we offer any disgruntled LAA manager a full right of reply should they be equally upset by our latest evidence-based supposition.
