Three Audiences, One Investigation, Three Different Reports

2026-09-30 · Philip Choo · AI9OS

An investigation reaches a point where people need to be told what has been found. Usually three of them.

The instructing solicitor, who has to decide what to do with it. The lay client, whose matter it is. And often a referrer, the person who introduced the matter and is now being asked in corridors how it is going.

The easy thing is to write one good report and send it to all three. It is also the most common output mistake in the trade, and it is almost never recognised as one.

Never send one report to three people. Write three documents, for three audiences, and keep each in its own named folder.

The narrowest distribution that still lets each person act is the right one. They need different things, and each of them can be harmed by the wrong things.

The solicitor gets everything, including what will not stand up

The solicitor decides what gets filed, argued or dropped. They cannot do that on filtered material.

• Every finding, with its confidence grade. Ungraded material cannot be weighed.
• A section on what is not being said. Its absence is exactly what makes a report look overconfident.
• A discovery schedule, meaning every document, account or reference the practice can already name but cannot itself obtain, laid out so the solicitor can request it. This converts the investigator's blockers into the lawyer's demands, and it is often the most valuable thing produced.
• Every claim's dependence on contested evidence, stated at the point of the claim, not in a general note three pages away.
• The decisions only the solicitor can make, each with what happens if nobody decides, and a default if no answer comes in time.
• A short reply form, because a question with four boxes gets answered and an open question does not.

The client gets their actions and the honest limits

The client is not a lawyer, and a report written for one will either confuse them or, worse, equip them to do something unwise.

• Numbered actions, most valuable first, with what each is worth.
• A simple status for each item: use it, fix it first, or on hold.
• An explicit "do not do this yourself" wherever it applies. A report that reads as an instruction to go and find documents can cause real harm.
• The one big thing not yet established, in plain words.
• Honest costs, including the cheaper option.

And what stays out: internal grading vocabulary, legal analysis, and anything the client could repeat to the other side and be wrong about.

Keep it short. If a sentence would not survive being read aloud across a table, cut it. Where the client reads another language more comfortably, put that language on the lines that carry consequence (the action, the warning, the cost) rather than on every line. The report has to fit the reader.

The referrer gets status and their own lane

A referrer is neither client nor lawyer. Evidential detail in their hands is a confidentiality exposure with no upside.

• Five lines of status, because they are asked in passing and need a correct short answer.
• Their one action, and why it does not duplicate anyone else's. Referrers disengage when their task looks redundant.
• The fee position and what triggers it, so nobody invoices early to hit a date.
• Two things not to say, which prevents an overstatement that later has to be withdrawn.

One distinction matters a great deal here: is the introducer inside or outside the practice? An external introducer has no professional relationship with the client and no need for anyone's material. A director or employee of the practice is different: sharing with them internally is not disclosure. The two look identical in a folder listing and call for opposite handling, so ask at intake and record the answer.

Make the reading order obvious

Every file and folder starts with a number, so the reader knows where to begin without being told.

• Recipient folders are numbered in the order they are sent, and named for the actual person, not the role. Roles change; the record should show who received what.
• Documents inside are numbered in reading order, starting from an index or a "start here" page.
• The filename says what the document is and when it is due. "Four decisions required by 20 August" is a better name than "Update".
• Status travels in the filename: on hold, needs your correction, released. A folder can be forwarded without its covering email; the filename goes with it. This is the constructive side of the point that a filename is an assertion: if names will be read as claims, make them true ones.

Three figures, sent selectively

Three figures earn their place in most matters: a dated chain of events, a map of connections between people and assets coloured by what is proven rather than by type, and a chart of which findings depend on which evidence, which matters whenever any item is contested. The solicitor gets all three. The client gets a simplified timeline only. And every figure is checked by reading its text back, not by glancing at it.

If you are one of the three

"Is this the version written for me?" A report that plainly was written for someone else is telling you either too much or too little, and you will not always know which.