How I Organise My General Legal Council Stuff

There was a time in my life when I did not have to concern myself with anything GLC related.  Then I left government service to be in-house counsel and that changed.  Months after I resigned from my that job I forgot to pay my Practising Certificate fees and I had to pay the penalty.

I am generally an organised person so I was … No strike that I still AM, quite pissed at myself for not realizing and having to pay double when I wasn’t even practising law.  [I only keep current … just in case I need to do something in the capacity of a Lawyer.]  I could not believe I missed that!  My only revenge was to organise my business so it would never happen again.

The first thing I did was go through all the legislation related to the profession and created reminders on my computer.  Then I created a folder on my computer that I labelled “General Legal Council”.  In that folder I created sub-folders for:

1.    GLC - Annual Declaration of Activities – Money Laundering Regulations

     I had created this folder the moment I was advised we were required to submit this form.  Notice how I label the file in the picture below.  The year could be inserted at the beginning or end of the filename to organise the documents sequentially by year but I prefer the year first for these forms.    I also added my attorney number so the recipient can find my document by name or number.  

     When I send attachments to the GLC the file name will usually be included in the subject of the email so if I need to find a copy of the email I sent to the GLC attaching this form it will be easier to locate.

2.    GLC – Laws

In this folder, I save copies of Legislation governing the Legal Profession so I do not have to constantly be Googling or relying on the GLC’s website (which irritates me) to find an Act or Regulations when I need them.

3.    GLC - Practising Certificates

In this folder I have sub-folders for:

                 

I maintain a separate sub-folder for scanned copies of the practising certificate issued to.  By adding the year the Practising Certificate expires in the file name they are saved in sequential order so it is easy to see which ones are missing.  I find it helpful to save scanned copies in one folder in the unlikely event I am asked to produce them.

You do not have to save them in a subfolder if you prefer not.  However, I would recommend that in deciding on the file name you put the year at the end so all the Practising Certificates would always be batched together in sequential order.   If you place the year in front all the documents in the folder for the year 2001 will be together and sorted alphabetically which makes locating a specific Practising Certificate a little harder.

The picture below illustrates how the documents will appear if you saved all Practising Certificate related files in one folder with the year at the end of the file name.

Practising Certificate – Applications Sub-folder

This folder is further divided.  I maintain separate folders for Applications, Declarations, Payments and Receipts.  The receipts folder is where I store all documents proving the GLC received my application for a new Practising Certificate.  The payments folder is where I store all GLC issued receipts for Practice Certificates.

4.    GLC – Payments Sub-Folder

This is where I save all “other” receipts for payment to the GLC.

5.    GLC – Correspondence – Sub-Folder

Any correspondence I receive from the GLC via the post is saved here.

And that is how I organise all my documents related to the General Legal Council.