What belongs on the matter file after a phone call
A plain-English guide to file notes of telephone attendances for Australian law firms. What the conduct guidance says the note has to contain, what the claims and complaints data says a missing one costs, why a time entry is not a substitute, what a late note may and may not do, and how long the note has to be kept.
A call that was answered but never written up is, as far as the matter is concerned, a call that did not happen. Queensland Law Society Guidance Statement No. 40 names the telephone call directly as an attendance that requires a file note, and the claims and complaints data says communication, not the law, is what most claims are about.
- The rule: Guidance Statement No. 40 lists a telephone call as an attendance requiring a file note, and sets out what the note has to record.
- Four elements: timing including duration, who was present, that it was a telephone attendance, and the substance of the discussion, the advice and the instructions.
- What it is worth: communication is what claims and complaints are mostly about, and the cases turn on whether a contemporaneous note exists.
- Not a time entry: a time entry is a costing record and proves nothing about what was said. The two are not substitutes.
- Late is fine, backdated is not: a late note dated honestly is acceptable. A backdated one is professional misconduct, with a reported case behind it.
The rule, plainly
Queensland Law Society Guidance Statement No. 40 is the most prescriptive published guidance on file notes in Australia, and it names the telephone call directly. A file note should record the time and date of the attendance, the names of the people present, the type of attendance, including a telephone call, and accurate details of the key matters discussed, the instructions given and the substance of the advice given. It engages rules 4, 7, 8, 14 and 19 of the Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules, and failures can amount to unsatisfactory professional conduct or, where there is dishonesty, professional misconduct.
Nothing in that is new to a practitioner. What is new is that the phone has moved: calls are taken on a mobile between hearings, in a car park, at six in the evening, and the write up depends on someone remembering an hour later what was said.
What the note has to contain
The Legal Practitioners' Liability Committee reduces it to three components, and Queensland Law Society adds a fourth that is easy to leave implicit.
The date, the time of day and the duration. Not just the date. Duration is what distinguishes a two minute confirmation from a forty minute advice call, and it is the first thing anyone reconstructing events asks about.
Who was on the call, by name. Including anyone else in the room or on the line. A call with a client's adult child present is a different call, and the note has to show it.
That it was a telephone call. Queensland Law Society lists the type of attendance as an element in its own right: telephone call, meeting, court attendance, settlement discussion or mediation.
What was discussed, the substance of the advice, the client's response, and any instructions. In plain language a stranger could follow. LPLC's phrasing is that it has to be a note for the file, not a note to self. Cryptic shorthand is one of the three recurring failures it sees in claims, alongside notes that are absent and notes that miss the advice actually given.
Tue 15 Sep 2026, 4:12pm, 14 min. Telephone call with J. Nguyen (client); her brother D. Nguyen also on the line at her request. Client asked whether she must respond to the letter of demand by Friday. Advised that the stated deadline is not a court deadline, that no proceedings have been filed, and that a holding reply is preferable to silence. Explained risk of costs if proceedings follow and she has ignored correspondence. Client instructed us to send a holding reply this week and to obtain the tenancy ledger from the agent. Client to email the ledger by Thursday. Next step: draft holding reply for review. Note made 4:30pm same day.
Claims and complaints are mostly about communication
The mechanism, in two cases
The court described the failure to confirm oral advice in writing, or at least to note it by means of a file note, as extraordinary and sufficiently remarkable as to induce doubt whether the advice was given at all. Without the note, the advice might as well not have happened.
A solicitor successfully defended a negligence claim about advice on loan documents. Her detailed file note recorded the genesis of the transaction, the documents explained and the fact that the clients' home was at risk, and it corroborated her evidence. Same mechanism, opposite outcome.
LPLC's own observation is that it sees many examples where file notes are inadequate in their detail or completely absent. There is no published Australian statistic putting a number on how many claims turn on a missing note, so this guide does not invent one. The figures above are the honest measure of the territory.
A time entry is not a file note
Both are needed. A time entry proves the call happened and was charged. It proves nothing about what was said on it.
| Time entry | File note | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | A costing record, so the work can be billed and assessed | An evidentiary record of what was said and advised |
| What it records | Date, task description, practitioner, duration and amount charged | Time, date and duration, who was present, the type of attendance, the substance of the discussion, the advice and the instructions |
| Who comes looking for it | The client on an itemised bill, and a costs assessor | A court, the regulator, your insurer, and whoever picks up the file next |
| Does it satisfy Guidance Statement No. 40 | No | Yes, where it is complete |
| How it usually fails | Never recorded at all | Reads: telephone attendance with client, 0.2 |
Contemporaneous, and never backdated
File notes have the greatest evidentiary value when made at the time or as close to it as possible. Where that did not happen, the note can still be made later, provided its date says honestly when it was made. Three questions settle what a late note may and may not do.
The Han case is the strongest argument for capturing the note at the point of the call rather than from memory afterwards. The risk a missing note creates is not only evidentiary. It is the temptation it creates later, and that temptation has a reported case attached to it.
The write up comes out of the billable three hours
The compounding is the point. Of an eight hour day, about three hours are captured as billable, of which around 88% is invoiced and around 93% of that is collected, so roughly 30% of the working day converts to revenue. Retyping a phone message into the practice management system is not in the three hours. Neither is reconstructing on Thursday what was said on Tuesday. That is the quiet cost of a front desk that produces messages rather than records, and it is why the comparison of an AI receptionist with an outsourced answering service turns on the artefact rather than the price.
How long the note has to live
Seven years is the working answer, and it comes from law society guidance rather than from one clean statutory provision. The one seven year rule that is statutory is for trust records.
- Client files: seven years, per the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner and the Law Institute of Victoria (from completion or termination of the engagement, with client consent before destroying hard copies).
- Files for minors: until seven years after the client turns eighteen (NSW OLSC).
- Trust records: seven years from the last transaction entry or the finalisation of the matter, whichever is later. This one is statutory: s 147, Legal Profession Uniform Law.
Where a cause of action can accrue well after the retainer ends, risk assess before destroying rather than run a calendar rule:
- Wills and will instructions
- Family law agreements
- Mortgages running beyond seven years
- Leases with options
- Matters involving minors
- Powers of attorney and deeds
- A logically ordered file with a clear audit trail.
- Metadata preserved, showing when each document was created and where it came from.
- Originals kept where a document has evidentiary value in its original form.
- A file note of the scanning itself, recording how and when documents were digitised.
Writing the note by default
- A summary and a transcript of every call, within a minute or two of the caller hanging up, while it is still fresh enough to verify.
- Filed to the matter, in the practice management system the firm already uses, not to an inbox.
- A prompt to verify, so the practitioner who took the call reads and confirms the note, which is what the conduct guidance requires.
- A queue for unmatched callers, so a new enquiry that has no matter yet is filed with one action rather than lost.
- Time captured only for the lawyer's part of the call, and only if the firm turns it on. No client should be billed for the minutes a service spent qualifying an enquiry.
- The caller told the call is transcribed, every time, at the start. See the recording guide for why that wording matters.
General information, not legal advice
This guide summarises published guidance from Queensland Law Society, the Legal Practitioners' Liability Committee, Lawcover, the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, the Law Institute of Victoria and the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner as at 22 September 2026. It is general information about record keeping practice and is not legal advice. Retention and file ownership rules differ between jurisdictions, so check the guidance that applies to your practice. The example file note is illustrative and does not describe a real matter.
File notes, the questions firms ask
Queensland Law Society Guidance Statement No. 40 lists a telephone call as a type of attendance a file note should record, alongside meetings, court attendances, settlement discussions and mediations. The practical test is whether anything was said that could later matter: instructions given, advice given, a deadline mentioned, a fact confirmed. In most practices that is most calls, which is why the habit is hard to keep by hand and worth automating.
Four things. The date, time and duration of the call. Who was on it, by name, including anyone else present. That it was a telephone attendance. And the substance: what was discussed, the advice given, the client's response and any instructions, written plainly enough for a stranger to follow.
It depends where you practise, and the jurisdictions do not agree. The Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner treats documents prepared for the client's benefit as the client's, expressly including notes of conferences and telephone conversations with counsel and notes of conversations with third parties, while notes a solicitor made for their own protection or records stay with the solicitor. The Law Institute of Victoria groups file notes with diary entries and time sheets as documents created for the solicitor's own benefit and use. Queensland Law Society treats file notes as subject to privilege. Check your own jurisdiction before a file transfer.
Not on its own. Queensland Law Society Guidance Statement No. 40 says a file note generated using AI should be checked and verified by the practitioner who attended. The transcript is the raw material and the practitioner's verification is what turns it into a record the firm can stand behind. The same guidance says it is ordinarily good practice to secure prior consent from other participants before using voice to text or AI transcription.
Make it as soon as practical and date it accurately as the date it was actually made. What you cannot do is create a note later and hold it out as contemporaneous. In Legal Services Commissioner v Han [2023] QCAT 310 a practitioner backdated file notes by three years and misrepresented when they were prepared, and the tribunal found professional misconduct, with a public reprimand, a six month suspension and a two year bar on holding a principal practising certificate. The missing note is a problem. The invented one is a career problem.
Seven years is the working answer for client files, from law society guidance rather than from a single provision, and seven years after the last transaction entry or the finalisation of the matter is the statutory rule for trust records under section 147 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law. LPLC's caution is worth heeding: keep files longer where a cause of action can accrue more than six years after the retainer ends, which covers wills, family law agreements, mortgages running beyond seven years, leases with options and matters involving minors.
It can produce the raw material, and a good one produces a summary and a transcript of every call and files them to the matter as soon as the call ends. The practitioner still reads and verifies it, which is what the conduct guidance requires. What changes is the default: the record exists unless someone deletes it, instead of existing only when someone finds twenty minutes at the end of the day.
Primary sources and further reading
Every section reference and figure in this guide traces to one of these. They are listed so you can check the guide rather than take its word for it.
- Guidance Statement No. 40: File Notes, Queensland Law Society, current version 19 May 2026
- Meticulous file notes, a habit worth perfecting, Legal Practitioners' Liability Committee, July 2021
- Electronic file note template, Legal Practitioners' Liability Committee
- When seven years isn't long enough, Legal Practitioners' Liability Committee
- Protecting yourself from claims: when a file note saves the day, Lawcover
- What are the top negligence claims facing lawyers today?, College of Law, August 2023, reporting Lawcover claims data
- Lawcover guide: false file notes, Law Society Journal
- Legal Services Commissioner v Han [2023] QCAT 310, Queensland Judgments
- Annual Report 2024-2025, Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner
- Factsheet 14: file ownership and handling, Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner
- File ownership, retention and destruction guidelines, Law Institute of Victoria
- Going digital: record keeping guidance, Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner
- Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) s 147, keeping trust records, AustLII
- Law firm KPIs and benchmarks, 2025 Legal Trends Report data, Clio
- Costs Guide, 7th edition, The Law Society of New South Wales
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