Quite often I advise clients who have a situation that is becoming difficult, but in which they do not yet want to involve lawyers. I am therefore advising in the background.
Sometimes the other party only seems to want to communicate by telephone, and seems reluctant to write letters or e-mails. This makes me suspicious that the other party does not want there to be a record of what he has said, even that he may wish it to be deniable .
In such situations, the advice that I give clients is two-fold. first, they should keep a log of phone calls : date and time, other party to the call, what was discussed and agreed, that sort of thing . Second, following a telephone call they should send a simple e-mail to the other person : ” following our conversation, I confirm that we agreed …”
If such an e-mail is sent , then unless there is a fairly prompt reply correcting any misunderstanding , it is going to be difficult for the other party to deny that the e-mail is an accurate record of what was agreed , particularly if the denial is only made several months later in the course of court proceedings .
This kind of evidence will assist considerably in helping the judge decide what was said . There is now some corroborative evidence and it is no longer a case of it simply being one person’s word against the other’s.
