Undertakings: the promise you cannot quietly drop

The standard is unusually absolute

The Rules of Professional Conduct require a lawyer to strictly and scrupulously fulfil any undertakings given, and to honour any trust conditions accepted in the course of litigation. There is no reasonableness qualifier in that sentence and no allowance for changed circumstances.

That matters because undertakings are given casually and often. A line in a covering letter, a sentence on a call confirmed by email, an acknowledgement in a closing agenda — each can be a personal promise binding the lawyer who gave it, independent of whether the client later wants it kept.

Where they actually come from

In a small practice the recurring sources are predictable, which is what makes them trackable:

• Real estate closings — to register, to discharge, to remit funds, to deliver documents after closing.
• Litigation — to produce a document, to serve something, to preserve or return material, or trust conditions attached to documents delivered in escrow.
• Corporate transactions — to deliver executed originals or minute-book items once the deal has closed.
• Family and estates — to hold funds, to provide disclosure by a date, to sign back.

The common feature is that the promise is made at the busiest point of a matter and comes due after the interesting part is over, when attention has moved to the next file.

The failure mode is administrative, not moral

Breaches rarely begin with a decision. They begin with a promise that was never recorded anywhere except in the letter that made it, in a matter that then closed. Nobody chose to break it; nobody was looking at it.

What a working system looks like

The mechanics are unremarkable and the discipline is in doing them every time rather than when a matter feels important:

• Record every undertaking as it is given, with who gave it, to whom, what exactly was promised, and by when.
• Give each one a date that is monitored, not a date that sits in the text of a letter.
• Keep them visible after the matter closes, because that is when most of them fall due.
• Record satisfaction explicitly, with the evidence, so "done" is a fact on the file rather than a recollection.

Two habits are worth adding at the point of giving one. Be precise about what is promised and by when, since a vague undertaking is harder to satisfy and harder to prove satisfied. And be careful about undertaking to do something outside your own control — a promise that depends on a third party is still yours to keep.