Client playbooks
Your IP Workflow Should Operate the Way Your Organisation Does.
Every organisation has operating rules, and most of them live in people’s heads or in a thread somebody has to remember. A playbook makes those rules part of the matter itself, so they apply on the first instruction and on the five hundredth.
What a playbook holds
Thirteen kinds of operating rule
Different clients have different requirements. Different clients within the same firm may have different requirements. And sometimes one matter has to be handled differently from everything else in the portfolio. A playbook holds the standing rule; the matter can hold the exception.
- Reminder cadenceHow often we chase, how early we start, and how insistent the sequence becomes as the date approaches.
- Reporting recipientsWho receives which report, in which format, and whether docketing teams are copied automatically.
- Escalation contactsWho is told when an approval is late or a date is at risk, and after how long.
- PO rulesWhether a purchase order must exist before work begins, and what happens when it does not.
- Billing entitiesWhich legal entity is invoiced for which matter, client or business unit.
- CurrenciesThe currency in which quotations and invoices are issued, per client or per entity.
- Filing authorityWho may authorise a filing, and whether a second authority is required.
- Cost approvalsThresholds above which costs must be approved before they are incurred.
- Signature routesWho executes documents, in what order, and who is chased when execution stalls.
- Naming conventionsHow matters, documents and reports are named so they land correctly in your systems.
- Cost centresInternal accounting codes captured at intake and carried onto every invoice.
- Business unitsWhich unit owns which portfolio segment, for reporting and for approvals.
- Portfolio taxonomyTechnology families, mark families and groupings, so reporting arrives in your structure.
Versioning
Rules change. The history should not.
A playbook is versioned. When a rule changes — a new billing entity, a different approval threshold, a new reporting recipient — the change is recorded with its date and its author, and matters carry the version that was in force when the action was taken.
That matters when a question is asked a year later. “Why did this report go to that person?” has an answer: because that was the rule at the time, and here is the version that says so.
The limit of a playbook
What no playbook can do
A playbook records how you want operational work handled. It does not and cannot override the law, a professional obligation, or the professional judgement of the attorney responsible for the matter.
If an instruction in a playbook would conflict with a statutory requirement or a professional duty, the requirement prevails and we tell you. If a matter needs a decision the playbook did not anticipate, it goes to a professional rather than being resolved by rule. Operational automation stops where judgement begins.
Professionals make the legal decisions. Jidoka makes sure the operation keeps moving.
Begin
Send one instruction and watch it become a matter.
No portal, no onboarding, no data entry. Email the instruction the way you already work, and see what the docket does with it.