The deadline was in the other office's diary

A single-office practice can run on a shared diary and personal memory. Add a second office and the assumptions break silently, because the failure mode is not a missing entry — it is an entry nobody with responsibility can see.

Transfers are the exposure

Matters move between offices for capacity, expertise or client convenience. The file moves. The dates, which live in a local diary and in the previous advocate's head, frequently do not.

Ownership has to be a field

Not an understanding. A named person against each date, visible from any office, who is answerable for it. Where ownership is implied by which office holds the file, a transfer creates a gap that nobody notices until the date arrives.

What escalation should mean

A date approaching without preparation recorded ought to surface to someone senior before it passes, not appear in a review afterwards. That is the difference between a calendar and a control.

For a firm carrying limitation risk across offices, it is also the difference between an inconvenience and a claim.