“Sir, Any Update?” Three Words Every Advocate Wakes Up To.

There are three words every advocate in India can recite in their sleep, mainly because that is when they arrive.

“Sir, any update?”

It lands at 11.04 pm. The hearing was at 11.04 am. Nothing has moved in twelve hours except the client’s imagination.

The message has a dialect

The classic is “Sir, any update?” The follow-up, three minutes later, is “Sir??” The professional sends “Good morning sir” at 6.15 am and lets it sit there, loaded. The veteran forwards the court’s own website link and asks what it means.

Then there is the relative, who was never in the case, has never met the advocate, and has several suggestions.

None of it is rude. Each one is a small prayer with a blue tick.

Lost in translation

The trouble is that an honest answer rarely sounds like an update.

“The matter was not reached” is a complete report to an advocate. To a client it sounds like “nothing happened”. “Adjourned to the 14th” sounds like “come back next month”. And “order reserved”, the most hopeful phrase in the building, sounds like the court has gone away to think about him personally.

The advocate did a full day’s work. The summary fits in four words. The 11 pm message is born in that gap.

The client is pressing refresh

Here is the kind way to read it. In most matters, the latest status lives in exactly one place: the advocate’s head. It is a superb head. It is also the only screen the client has.

The court does publish its list. The client reads it the way most of us read a medical report: carefully, twice, and then he calls the doctor anyway.

So he refreshes. On WhatsApp. At night. With folded hands. He is not doubting his advocate. He is paying the highest compliment in litigation: you are the only one who knows.

What a chamber can do about it

Three small moves.

Two lines after every hearing, the same day. What happened, in plain words. What happens next, with the date.

Translate once. “Not reached” becomes “the court ran out of time today, we are listed again on the 14th”. A few extra words. One fewer sleepless client.

Let the status live outside the head. When the last step and the next date sit on the matter itself, anyone in the chamber can answer in ten seconds, and the best answers go out before the question arrives.

The signature below makes my interest plain, so I will say it: LawVyn keeps every matter’s last step and next date in one place, which is exactly where that two line update comes from.

The goal is modest. One night the phone will buzz at 11.04 pm, and the message will say: “Thank you, sir.”

Most advocates will check twice to make sure it is not a wrong number.

Ravi Daparthi
CEO of LawVyn
A Practice management software for Indian advocates and law firms.
https://www.ravidaparthi.com/ ·
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravidaparthi ·

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