Legal
Proving it with whatever you kept
The argument is no longer who is right: it is who can show it. And there is a deadline, and no second round.
By this point there is no room left to explain: there is a deadline, submissions must be made, and **what is submitted is what there will be**. The whole relationship —two years of emails, calls, meetings, decisions taken on the hoof— is reduced to whatever can be put on the table by a date. And what can be put there does not depend on how you worked, but on how you filed while working.
What the submittable material consists of
| What there was | Where it usually sits | If it is not there |
|---|---|---|
| The contract | It gets found | Rarely missing |
| What was agreed later | In scattered emails | **In practical terms it never existed** |
| What was discussed | In memory | It cannot be submitted |
| **What was warned and ignored** | **In an email, if one was sent** | **It weighs most and is missing most** |
Important
**Almost every change to a commercial relationship is agreed by email, and almost no email is filed as what it is: a contract amendment.** The original contract lives in a folder and is always found; the six emails that changed the scope, the dates or the price live in specific people's inboxes, some of whom have left the company. In a procedure, those six emails weigh more than the contract.
What can be done beforehand, and only beforehand
- 1
File later agreements where the contract lives
An email that changes something is part of the contract, not correspondence.
- 2
Put warnings in writing
«We did tell them» only counts if it was said on a channel that leaves a trace.
- 3
Do not let it depend on personal inboxes
People leave and their mail is closed. It is the commonest loss.
- 4
And retain beyond the end of the project
Procedures begin once the project has already been archived.
Watch out
The commonest discovery when preparing a procedure is **that the person who handled it left and their mailbox was closed**. Nobody decided it: the normal leavers policy was applied. With it went the conversations explaining why what was done was done, and what remains is a contract that does not reflect what was actually agreed. That loss cannot be repaired, and it happens through an administrative decision taken months earlier without this in mind.
Worth knowing
What documentation is admissible as evidence, within what deadlines it must be submitted and what weight each kind of communication carries **is determined by the rules governing the procedure and settled by your lawyer**. Here we cover what comes before: how to arrive with what is needed already filed, because at that point nothing more can be generated.
›Does an email count as proof of an agreement?
Its weight is for the procedure to decide; what is certain is that it counts for nothing if it does not exist.
›How long do I keep a finished project's records?
Longer than the project lasts. Your lawyer sets the exact period.
›What if the person who handled it has left?
Which is why the archive cannot live in their inbox. It is the commonest loss.
A real case
The situation
Later agreements live in scattered emails.
What you do
- Files each agreement alongside the contract it amends
What you get
What was agreed later is submitted with what was agreed before.
The situation
The person who ran the project left and their mailbox was closed.
What you do
- Stores documentation outside personal inboxes
What you get
A departure does not take the relationship's history.
The situation
Submissions are due and half the relationship is missing.
What you do
- Gathers the complete file for each client or project
What you get
Preparation is a review rather than a search.
The situation
«We did warn them» is nowhere on record.
What you do
- Keeps sent communications with their dates
What you get
The warning is shown rather than recounted.
The situation
The project was archived and its documentation purged.
What you do
- Applies retention set with legal periods in mind
What you get
What is needed years later still exists.
The situation
Each department keeps its part of the relationship separately.
What you do
- Centralises the file in one place
What you get
The complete account exists in one location.
This article answers
- what documentation to submit in arbitration
- proving what was agreed by email
- deadline to submit documents
- cannot find the emails from that project