What does granting substitutions between advocates really look like today?

The answer I usually give to that question is inelegant but accurate: these are guerrilla methods. Private Facebook groups where posts get published. Chaos, no predictability, questionable data security and recurring payment problems. So let us look at this mechanism up close – because until we name its weaknesses, we will keep repeating them.

Anatomy of a typical “group” engagement

The course is always similar. A counsel publishes a post: city, court, date, time, sometimes the case number. Within tens of minutes two or three volunteers respond – in the comments or in private messages. In practice the choice follows the order of replies, not competence. The rate is agreed in a private conversation. The files and instructions go by e-mail, the report – by text message, the invoice – at some point.

As a result, the process of a single engagement scatters across four channels, none of which was designed to handle legal engagements. And this is not criticism of colleagues – it is criticism of the tool we all use for want of a better one.

Four weaknesses of this model

Chaos and no predictability

A post lives in the feed for a few dozen minutes and then vanishes into the algorithm's abyss. An engagement for tomorrow morning may fail to find a provider not because nobody was available, but because the right person happened not to refresh the app. It is hard to build a firm's work organisation on the reach of a social network.

No real verification

In a group of tens of thousands of members, nobody checks whether the person volunteering is on the roll of advocates or attorneys-at-law, whether they are suspended, or whether they have a conflict of interest. The verification is done – or not – by the ordering counsel themselves, after hours, in a hurry.

Data security and professional secrecy

I consider this the gravest issue. A post containing the court, the case number and the subject of the case is read by tens of thousands of people, potentially including opposing counsel. The files then travel by private messenger to a person whose identity nobody has confirmed. Professional secrecy knows no “I was in a hurry” exception.

Payments

The whole settlement process is done by hand, in chat messages, and involves what every provider knows first-hand: delayed transfers and polite e-mails asking for payment, sent a second and a third time. The work was done in court, yet its remuneration depends on someone else's bookkeeping discipline.

The duty to document a substitution

One more thing must be added, easy to forget in all this haste. Under the rules of practising as an advocate or attorney-at-law, the granting of a substitution should be properly documented – both at the level of authority (a substitution power of attorney with a defined scope) and at the level of the arrangements between counsel.

Proper documentation is hard to achieve when the whole process happens partly in a private group, partly over the phone and partly by e-mail. This is not formalism for formalism's sake. The point is that in the event of a dispute – with the client, with the insurer, before the disciplinary ombudsman – documentation is the only thing that remains. A screenshot of a comment under a post is hard to call documentation.

What should replace this model

In my view the solution is not to ban announcements, but to give a substitution engagement one predictable flow:

1. a described engagement – court, date, scope of the action, rate, in one place and in a fixed structure;
2. a verified provider – a confirmed entry on the roll before they see any details of the case;
3. a controlled flow of information – case details available only once the engagement is accepted, through a channel appropriate for data covered by secrecy;
4. documentation by default – the power of attorney, the arrangements, the report;
5. settlement built into the process, not glued onto it a month later.

Summary

Facebook groups have played a role that should not be dismissed: they showed the scale of demand for substitutions and created an environment of mutual help within the bar. However, a tool built for entirely different purposes will not carry the requirements that law and professional ethics place on the circulation of information covered by secrecy. This is not a question of convenience. It is a question of standard.

Wokanda.net was created precisely to define and enforce that standard – from provider verification to settlement.

Want to order or take on a substitution? Do it on Wokanda →