Ask any family lawyer what slows down a property matter and disclosure will be near the top of the list. Documents arrive late, in the wrong format, for the wrong period, or not at all. Staff spend hours chasing, renaming files and updating spreadsheets.
The causes are surprisingly consistent from firm to firm. Here are the most common, and what helps.
1. The request is too vague
"Please send all your bank statements for the last 12 months" sounds clear. To a client, it's a large, unbounded task. Which accounts? Which banks? Does the offset account count? What about the account they closed in March?
What helps: turn the request into a list of specific items. One item per account, card, loan, super fund or entity, each with the period it should cover. A client can finish a list of specific items. They can't finish "everything".
2. The client doesn't know what's still needed
After the first batch of documents, most clients lose track. They've sent something for most items, but they don't know which ones are complete, so they stop.
What helps: give the client a view of their own list with a status for each item: done, waiting for review, or needs a new copy. People finish lists when they can see the end.
3. Documents arrive with no label
Email attachments called "scan0001.pdf" or "IMG_4471.HEIC" have to be opened, identified, renamed and filed before anyone can review them. With several dozen documents per matter, that's hours of work, and mistakes are easy.
What helps: have the client upload against the item it answers, with a few details such as the institution and the last four digits of the account. The document arrives already labelled.
4. Follow-ups depend on someone remembering
Chasing is usually manual. A lawyer or paralegal notices something is missing, writes an email, and sets themselves a reminder. When work gets busy, the chasing stops, and so does the disclosure.
What helps: automatic reminders tied to due dates. For example, a reminder a few days before the due date, another on the day, then weekly while anything is overdue. The client gets nudged consistently, and staff only step in when there's a real problem.
5. Sending a document back is awkward
When a statement is incomplete or the wrong period, someone has to explain what's wrong, and the client has to work out what to send instead. Often the explanation is buried in a long email, and the new copy has the same problem.
What helps: send the item back with a short, specific reason attached to it, such as "Only one payslip was attached. Please upload every payslip from April to June." The client sees the reason next to the item, and the earlier copy stays on file for comparison.
6. Nobody can see the whole picture
When the status of disclosure lives in an inbox, a shared drive and a spreadsheet, nobody can answer a simple question quickly: what are we still waiting for? That matters when a client calls, when a colleague takes over the file, and when the other side says something was provided when it wasn't.
What helps: one place where every requested document has a status, and the matter shows what's outstanding at a glance.
7. The other side runs on a different system
Even when your own client's disclosure is organised, the other side's often isn't. Documents arrive by email in batches, with covering letters that don't quite match what was asked for.
What helps: agree a list early, track their documents against it, and keep a register of what you've disclosed to them. We cover this in getting disclosure from the other side.
A simple test
Pick a current property matter and try to answer these in under a minute:
- Which documents are still outstanding from the client?
- When was the client last reminded?
- Which documents have you disclosed to the other side, and when?
- Which of the other side's documents have you checked?
If the answers take longer than a minute, the process, not the people, is what's slowing disclosure down.
How Matter Folio handles it
Matter Folio turns each matter into a list of specific items, gives clients a phone-friendly page with a status for each one, sends reminders automatically, and lets you send an item back with a reason. Every document arrives labelled, and the matter shows what's outstanding at a glance. Read more about document requests and document review.