Priya in conveyancing has three completions to get away before the banks close, and the case management system has chosen this moment to have a little think. The IT company’s portal has acknowledged her ticket very politely. The trainee who once fixed the printer, and has been the IT department ever since, is under a desk with a phone torch. The money goes at 4:58. Nobody at Ludworth Vane enjoys their weekend.
We noticed the system slowing down back in the spring and sorted it on a quiet Wednesday. Priya completes all three, leaves at half five, and the trainee gets to go back to being a trainee.
The senior partner is on holiday and can’t get into email. The authenticator app is on the old phone, and the old phone is in a kitchen drawer in Surrey. Three people spend the morning on a WhatsApp group trying to help. Someone suggests switching the security off “just for the week”. For a moment, everyone considers it.
Nothing happens. He orders another coffee.
A big client sends over a 140-question security questionnaire, due in a fortnight. It lands on the practice manager’s desk, gets forwarded to the IT company, and comes back as a brochure about the IT company. Question 37 asks when Cyber Essentials was last renewed. Everyone had assumed someone else was keeping an eye on that. It lapsed in March.
Most of the answers were already written up in last quarter’s review, so the questionnaire goes back in three days. Cyber Essentials was renewed in February, three weeks early. The client replies to say thank you, which the practice manager is still quietly proud of.



