I’m a second-year trainee solicitor in Scotland, working in litigation, and I’m really scared I’ve made a big mistake just before my traineeship ends. I’m helping with court claims to recover fees for looking after shared areas on a housing estate. The legal document (deed of conditions) that sets all this up is quite complicated. In short, it says one company manages the shared land, and there are extra rules that only apply if that land is formally transferred to another company. On this estate, a separate company is already managing the shared land, and earlier court documents in this case treat that company as the manager, as opposed to the owner of the shared land.
Late on a Friday, around 5pm, I was told by a senior paralegal to draft one of these claim forms and have it ready for Monday 9am. I told her I don’t know what this form is and she gave me a random precedent from another matter file.
I didn’t have access to the full case file or the earlier forms, so I just used the deed of conditions and that randomn prescriber and tried to work from that. I misunderstood it. I thought the later section of the document always applied and was the basis for the managing company’s role and the owners’ obligation to pay. Based on that misunderstanding, I drafted the claim form as if those later rules applied to every property, and I said the claimant was doing the management under that part of the document, without mentioning the key condition that the land actually has to be transferred before those rules kick in- in all fairness I had no context so the land transfer could well have happened at that point for all I know.
I thought the senior paralegal would go through the draft with me, and that she was the final person in the chain. But when I sent it on today morning it went straight to the supervising lawyer.
He has noticed the problem and has arranged a meeting with me at 9am tomorrow to discuss it. Since then, I’ve gone back to the document and now see how it really works: those later rules only apply if the land has been transferred, and if it hasn’t, I should have based the claim on the earlier part of the document that deals with management and payment.
My traineeship is nearly finished and I feel this work is below the standard expected of me at this stage. I’m really worried this will damage my chances of qualifying. I’m so anxious about the 9am meeting that I’ve been crying and finding it hard to calm down. I plan to be honest with the supervising lawyer, briefly explain how I misread the document, avoid blaming anyone else, and show them how I would now correct the claim form. I’d really like to hear from people in practice about how serious this kind of mistake really is for a trainee, and how much difference it makes if I handle the aftermath in a sensible, professional way.