counsel-handoff

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

1. State the specific decision or advice required and the business owner who needs it.
2. Provide a concise factual summary, involved parties, geography or jurisdiction if known, current status, and material timeline.
3. Attach the complete authoritative documents and relevant communications, including executed versions, exhibits, notices, policies, or prior legal guidance.
4. Separate verified facts, requester statements, open factual questions, and business assumptions so counsel can judge evidence quality.
5. Identify deadlines, notice periods, operational dependencies, financial exposure, customer impact, or active incident context that affects timing.
6. State the desired business outcome, acceptable alternatives, and decisions already made by non-legal owners without asking counsel to infer them.
7. List stakeholders available for follow-up and any security, privacy, finance, HR, product, or technical expertise needed.
8. 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.