Use case
Dates you cannot be late for
A deadline you cannot miss deserves a delivery method you cannot dismiss. The filing window closes at 16:00, and your reminder is a calendar entry you stopped seeing three weeks ago, in a day already stacked with entries you also stopped seeing.
A calendar entry is a record, not a delivery
Legal work is unusual in that the cost of being late is fixed, external and often unrecoverable. Most professions negotiate their deadlines. A limitation period does not negotiate, and neither does a court office at 16:01.
The systems most practices rely on are calendars and case-management diaries. Both are excellent records. Neither is a delivery mechanism, because both assume somebody is looking at the right screen on the right day. Enter enough entries and you stop reading them, which is exactly the point at which the important one arrives and looks identical to a lunch.
The useful distinction is between recording a date and being reached on it. A reminder app for legal deadlines earns its place only at the second one.
How a fixed date slips
Never through ignorance of the date. Always through the last few hours before it.
The reminder that fired at 09:00
It gave you a whole day, which meant the morning was for other matters and the afternoon was for a hearing that overran. The window closed while you were in it.
The entry you have stopped reading
It has been in the diary for eleven weeks. It arrived as one grey line in a column of grey lines. Familiarity is what made it invisible.
The work the deadline requires
The filing itself takes 20 minutes. The document, the signature, the client's approval and the exhibit bundle take three days, and the reminder was set for the filing.
The callback you promised a client
You said Friday afternoon. Friday afternoon had two conferences and an urgent application in it, and the client is now composing a complaint about communication.
How to set a date you cannot be late for
The principle is simple: more than one warning, and the last one on a channel you cannot clear by reflex.
Set the reminder to the real deadline time
16:00, not a comfortable version of it. Optimistic self-imposed times are the ones you learn to treat as advisory, and once one is advisory they all are.
Work backwards to the preparation, not the event
Create a second reminder for the day the work has to start, which is the date that actually governs whether you make the deadline. The filing date is a consequence of it.
Stack pre-alarms on the day itself
A pre-alarm is a separate ring before the real reminder, from five minutes up to five hours, and you can stack more than one. Five hours out you can still rearrange the day. Thirty minutes out you file.
Raise the delivery for the ones with a fixed cost
Critical is described in the app as: alarm, then in-app call, then a phone call 10 min later if missed. Use it for limitation dates, filing windows and hearings, and leave the rest of the list on a plain alarm.
The three ways a reminder can reach you
Chosen per reminder, changeable at any time from the edit screen, and stopping the moment you acknowledge.
- notif_type 1
Regular
A full-screen alarm at the minute you set. The correct setting for the great majority of a diary.
- notif_type 3Recommended
Important
The alarm, then a full-screen call inside the app if you did not acknowledge it. Two attempts and no credits spent. Sensible for client callbacks with a promised time.
- notif_type 5Premium · uses credits
Critical
Alarm, then in-app call, then a real phone call 10 min later if missed. The call is placed by Timelee's servers on the phone network, so it rings while you are in a conference room with the handset face down and on silent.
A record of when something was actioned
Completed reminders go to History and stay there. It is useful in the ordinary way a paper attendance note is useful: when a question arises months later about whether a step was taken on the 3rd, you have something to look at other than your recollection.
Each reminder can also carry the detail. A short note, or a rich detail page with formatted text, tables and checklists that autosaves as you write. The reminder rings; the detail is what you read when it does.
Tags give you a second axis over the matter categories — a tag per matter or per client cuts across everything and pulls up one slice in a single filter.
- History is a plain list of what was marked done, and when
- Notes and detail pages attach to the reminder itself
- Google Calendar events appear next to your reminders; Timelee reads your calendar and does not write to it
What belongs on the loudest setting, and what does not
- Limitation dates and any statutory time limit — yes, with pre-alarms weeks and days ahead as separate reminders
- Filing windows that close at a fixed hour — yes
- Hearing and conference start times where you are attending — yes
- The day the preparation has to start for a dated obligation — yes, on Important
- Client callbacks with a time you named out loud — Important, not Critical
- Routine correspondence chase-ups — a plain alarm
- Time recording and billing prompts — a plain alarm on a daily repeat
- Everything else — a plain alarm, because a channel used constantly stops being a channel
Timelee is a reminder app. It is not a diary system, a case-management system or a source of legal dates.
It does not calculate limitation periods, it does not know your jurisdiction's rules, and it will not tell you a date is wrong. What it does is deliver the date you entered, on a channel that reaches you when a calendar notification would not. Your practice's own diary and file-management obligations sit where they already sit.
Diarise the next fixed date twice
Once for the day the work starts, once for the deadline itself with two pre-alarms and Critical delivery. Then see whether the second rung ever has to do any work.
Keep reading
- Pre-alarm remindersA warning hours before the one that counts.
- Reminder prioritiesFour levels and a view that sorts by them.
- Google CalendarSee your events next to your reminders.
- Shared remindersHand a step to a colleague and see it accepted.
- Reminders for recruitersPromised callbacks on a day already full.