Older members of the profession will remember that thrilling pastime of 'reading over' documents. For those who have not been involved in this procedure, it involved sitting down with a secretary or junior member of staff and reading the engrossed copy of a deed or document aloud while your colleague checked that what was read out accorded with what was in the latest draft. Tedious? Yes. Time consuming? Yes. Essential? Absolutely.

There is a tendency now to presume that the word processor will ensure that no mistakes are made, and that there is no need to check an engrossment. But the word processor is a servant not a master. It is a machine that is capable of error in its own right, but more likely through human error.


Excuses as to why documents are no longer read over include: 'we don't have time' and 'we can't charge for it'. At best, both excuses are flimsy.


Take the matrimonial lawyer who did not check the engrossed form of the final order recording the terms of a financial settlement. Unfortunately, the secretary had engrossed the second draft and not the final third version. As a result, the former wife was entitled to receive 75% of the sale proceeds of the matrimonial home as opposed to the figure of 55% in the final draft.


Then there is the probate practitioner who prepared a will for his client purporting to divide the substantial residual estate into four equal shares and then leaving the shares to three residual beneficiaries, the fourth name having been omitted in error.


There is also the agreement prepared by the corporate lawyer relating to a complex financial transaction. The draft had been amended many times, with complete paragraphs being deleted and others added. Unfortunately, no one checked to ensure that the cross-references to other numbered paragraphs were amended accordingly, with the result that there were numerous references to incorrect paragraph numbers, and paragraphs that did not exist in the document.


Rounding up the examples comes the lease which, due to a fault at the engrossment stage, had included every precedent clause in the word processor's memory for leases. Hence the landlord was to insure and the tenant was to insure. The lease was for a term of one, three, five, seven, ten and 15 years. And there were numerous other wholly irrelevant clauses.


These are just some examples of what goes wrong. In each case, the solicitors involved always now check the engrossment carefully against the final draft. Invariably, reading the document over is the most effective way of checking. Sometimes, the old fashioned ways are the best.


This column was prepared by AFP Consulting, a division of Alexander Forbes Risk Services UK