Supervision Risks in Busy (Litigation) Teams
Don’t let small mistakes become big problems
Introduction
The supervisor is sometimes described allegorically as a gardener, a person who provides a safe and supportive environment for the nurturing of the supervisee’s professional growth. In the less romanticised world of legal practice, supervision is decidedly less warm and fuzzy – the senior lawyer instructs, reviews, guides and corrects the junior lawyer’s work. At its core, it is still the same idea. Supervision involves the passing down of skills and ethical standards through observation, teaching and gatekeeping. The supervisor is one who turns confusing or overwhelming situations into manageable ones, looks out for hazards, provides guidance, gives new insights and perspectives.
Supervision is central to how most litigation practices operate today. The vast majority of litigation cases, save for the most straight forward ones, typically involve at least two, if not more, lawyers.
Done right, supervision boosts team efficiency, manages costs for the client and provides training for junior lawyers. The challenge, however, comes from the pace, pressure and demands of practice. When pressed for time, supervision can become less intentional or more light touch than planned, hence allowing mistakes to slip through. Supervision “gone wrong” leads to time slippages, causes embarrassment and in more serious cases, results in costly missteps.
Supervision risks are real so how can we better protect our practices? This short piece looks at some typical risk scenarios, considers the reasons giving rise to these risks and proposes a few practical steps to better manage such risks.
Small mistake, big headache
The following will likely place amongst top five in any litigation supervisor’s list of nightmare scenarios.
The demand that was never served
The junior mis-types the address on the demand letter to a guarantor. It is a tiny error, just off by a single digit. The supervisor vets the letter and checks its contents but assumes that the address would have been checked thoroughly by the junior. The error is overlooked. As a result, no demand is served on the guarantor by the time the suit is brought. The guarantor claims in his defence that no valid demand has been made on him and applies to strike out the claim for no reasonable cause of action.
The missed time-bar
A complex case with multiple claims is onboarded and the time bar for the earliest dated claim is calculated and discussed during the team case strategy meeting. The junior is assigned the task of inputting the time bar date into the case monitoring system. The junior forgets. No one checks. The time limitation for that claim expires before the suit is filed.
The professional conduct infraction
A last-minute request is made by the client during affidavit drafting to include a single sentence touching on the conduct of opposing counsel. The junior includes the sentence but overlooks speaking to the supervisor about it, thinking that since amendments are tracked on the draft, this would be seen by the supervisor. The inclusion is missed during vetting. As a result, no opportunity is afforded to opposing counsel to provide a response to the point prior to its inclusion in the affidavit. The opposing counsel lodges a complaint with the Law Society against the lawyers who prepared the affidavit for professional misconduct (making allegations against opposing counsel in affidavits without giving opposing counsel the opportunity to respond).
Why supervision risks exist
Thankfully, the scenarios discussed above do not happen to most of us, not most of the time anyway. But even the most cautious supervisor would have experienced his or her fair share of heart dropping moments – when the realisation hits that a deadline may have been miscalculated or a procedural requirement overlooked.
In theory, with the extra pairs of eyes and additional sets of hands on-deck under a team structure, mistakes ought to be less likely. Ironically, however, the larger the litigation team, the greater its vulnerability to risk of mistakes. Why is that so?
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In supervision, we are seeking to balance two competing imperatives – promoting supervisee independence on the one hand, and imposing guardrails to prevent catastrophic mistakes, on the other. The balancing of these conflicting priorities is in and of itself already a delicate act and inherently introduces to the workflow, vulnerability to errors. This risk is heightened with an increase in team size.
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The fast pace at which things are expected to happen further compounds the problem. Although everyone on the team does their very best, it is difficult to always stay on task, all the time, on all issues. In the absence of purposeful planning, it becomes all too easy for everyone on the team to assume that someone else on the team has a particular issue covered.
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With limited time on hand, delegation can become short and instructions brief. As a result, more assumptions are made, both by the supervisor and the supervisee. The problem is exacerbated when fellow team members (co-supervisees) make further assumptions about each other’s responsibilities.
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When an issue or problem is shared, no one actually owns it and it becomes nobody’s responsibility.
What can we do better?
By no means an exhaustive list, here are some practices supervisors can consider incorporating into the team workflow to enhance structure and accountability.
Strategy setting and monitoring
Unless working with juniors well attuned to our working style and expectations, it would be sensible to avoid the “please handle this” style of delegation. Providing sufficient direction and oversight is key to ensuring our expectations are well understood and met.
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When delegating work, call for case strategy discussions early on.
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Chart overall direction for the team so that everyone is on the same page.
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Set review dates and follow through with call backs on those dates.
Assigning roles appropriately
The job of supervising is made easier when the right task is assigned to the right person. It is tempting to assume that the bigger role should always go to the more senior lawyer. But that is not always the correct approach. Needless to say, if the senior member on the team is not assigned the more prominent role, care will have to be taken to manage expectations. Open communication and trust remain key to doing this well. In the long term, appropriate role assignment produces better results.
Ownership and accountability
Every task should have a clearly identified owner. Ambiguity creates gaps and gaps lead to misguided assumptions. It is therefore important to:
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Assign responsibility explicitly when delegating work.
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Be clear about expectations and deliverables.
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Confirm everyone’s understanding of their and others’ tasks and roles.
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Require acknowledgment of deadlines and deliverables.
By inculcating the discipline of asking “Who is responsible for this?”, we can help avoid problems further down the road.
Build in redundancy for the “big things”
Identify the “big things” – the really critical, important “do or die” tasks or issues. Every project and every case would have one, if not more, of these. They include:
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Time limitations.
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Filing deadlines.
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Procedural requirements.
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Regulatory requirements.
It pays to assign more than one person to such matters and possibly, even opt to have personal oversight of these.
AI integrity checks
When it comes to legal submissions, implement the necessary integrity checks to guard against fictitious AI generated citations. Keep in mind the Supreme Court of Singapore “Guide on the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools by Court Users” (Oct 2024) and the Ministry of Law and Law Society of Singapore “Guide for Using Generative AI in the Legal Sector” (Mar 2026).
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Which parts of the legal submissions involved the use of GenAI tools?
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Ensure verification of the existence of all authorities cited.
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Ensure verification of the accuracy of all text quoted and attributed.
Concluding Thoughts
Ultimately, effective supervision is about finding the sweet spot where sufficient room is given to promote individual development and team growth but appropriate safeguards are also put in place to prevent ruinous errors. Precisely because adept supervision is a fine balancing act, it comes with risks. But the goal in effective supervision is not perfection. We only need to catch the tiny mistakes early enough so that they do not become big problems. This, happily, is an eminently attainable goal.
