| name | counsel-handoff |
| description | Hand a legal matter to qualified counsel with complete factual context, authoritative documents, timeline, business objective, decisions required, deadlines, prior guidance, and clearly separated assumptions. |
Counsel Handoff
Use when legal interpretation, negotiation, advice, dispute strategy, or another matter requires qualified counsel.
Procedure
- State the specific decision or advice required and the business owner who needs it.
- Provide a concise factual summary, involved parties, geography or jurisdiction if known, current status, and material timeline.
- Attach the complete authoritative documents and relevant communications, including executed versions, exhibits, notices, policies, or prior legal guidance.
- Separate verified facts, requester statements, open factual questions, and business assumptions so counsel can judge evidence quality.
- Identify deadlines, notice periods, operational dependencies, financial exposure, customer impact, or active incident context that affects timing.
- State the desired business outcome, acceptable alternatives, and decisions already made by non-legal owners without asking counsel to infer them.
- List stakeholders available for follow-up and any security, privacy, finance, HR, product, or technical expertise needed.
- Record counsel's response, conditions, and follow-up obligations in the approved confidential system and route operational actions to their owners.
Decision rules
- A good handoff asks a precise question with complete facts.
- Do not edit unfavorable facts out of the packet.
- Distinguish business preference from legal requirement.
- Preserve confidentiality and privilege according to counsel and organizational policy.
Quality gate
The handoff is ready when counsel receives the actual decision needed, complete source material, a reliable timeline, known deadlines, business context, factual uncertainty, and relevant stakeholders without needing to reconstruct the matter from fragmented messages.
