An office does not miss an appeal deadline when the judgment and its date are recorded on the day it is issued, the system proposes the last day from periods the office’s lawyers review, and every deadline has an owner who is alerted seven days and again two days before it runs out. The system is complete when every deadline is closed explicitly, either by appealing and opening the next degree’s file or by treating the judgment as final, while legal responsibility for deadlines remains with the office.
8-minute readLast updated: The Murafe team
Key takeaways
Record the judgment on the day it is issued: its date, degree, type and operative part.
The proposed deadline is a starting point for the lawyer to review, not a final ruling, and legal responsibility for deadlines stays with the office.
Two alerts before every deadline runs out, the first seven days ahead and the second two days ahead, reach the lawyer in charge and their team.
Close every deadline explicitly with “Judgment appealed” or “Final / irrevocable judgment”, so alerts are not crowded with deadlines that are already settled.
Treat an order on petition like a judgment: record the last day to file a grievance against it on the day it is issued.
Why do offices that know the law well still miss deadlines?
An appeal deadline is rarely missed because the lawyer does not know the period; it is missed because the information did not pass from one person to another in time. The judgment is issued at a hearing a colleague attended, or the news arrives while the lawyer in charge is on leave, or the deadline is worked out in someone’s head and written in a personal diary no one else sees. In busy weeks, the distant deadline gives way to tomorrow’s hearings, until it suddenly becomes today’s. These are the most common causes:
The judgment’s date not recorded in the case file, or recorded days after it was issued.
The period calculated by hand, without a second lawyer checking it.
A deadline in one person’s calendar, which disappears when they are away.
A single alert on the last day, leaving no time to prepare the statement of appeal.
Judgments already appealed or now final that still show as open deadlines, so the real deadlines get lost among them.
Missing a single deadline does not affect only one file; it affects the client’s trust in the whole office, and it costs the partner many times more time in damage control and apologies than organising in advance would have taken. So the appeal deadline deserves a way of tracking separate from the hearings calendar: a clear starting point, the judgment; a clear end point, the office’s decision; and one owner in between.
The tracking system in five steps
The answer is a written system that everyone follows, not each lawyer’s own approach. The idea is simple: every judgment enters the system on the day it is issued, every judgment leaves it with an explicit decision, and in between there is a deadline with an owner and two alerts. If a single step fails, such as a judgment not recorded or a deadline not closed, the gap shows in front of the team before it becomes a loss. These are the steps as Murafe applies them:
Record the judgment on the day it is issued, from the “Judgments” tab in the case file: its date, degree, type (definitive, preparatory, in absentia, summary), outcome, operative part and the amount awarded.
The system proposes the “last day to appeal” from the judgment’s date and the appeal period set for its degree and the type of case, and shows the route of appeal and its period beneath it.
The lawyer in charge reviews the proposed deadline and changes it, by hand or with the quick buttons, whenever the circumstances of the file call for it.
The lawyer in charge and the team are alerted seven days and then two days before the deadline runs out, and the deadline appears on the dashboard and in the agenda.
The deadline is closed explicitly: “Judgment appealed” once an appeal is filed, or “Final / irrevocable judgment” when the judgment becomes final, and the alerts stop.
In the same recording step, the case status can be changed to “judgment issued” and the client notified, so it does not take three screens and three reminders. What matters is that recording judgments is a daily habit, not a task put off: a judgment that has not been recorded gets no proposed deadline and no alert, and stays outside every safeguard the office has built.
Appeal periods in the settings: who sets them and who reviews them?
A proposed deadline is never more accurate than the periods it is built on. So in Murafe, the periods are set under Settings → “Appeal periods”, by those with permission to manage the office’s data. The period varies by litigation degree: from first instance to appeal, from appeal to cassation, and from arbitration to an action for annulment; and by type of case: civil and commercial, summary, criminal, and dispute settlement committees.
The system infers the type of case from the court or body and the case type recorded in its file: a case before the Criminal Court or the Misdemeanours Court – Traffic Circuits, or one classed as a misdemeanour or a felony, takes the criminal period; the case type “summary” takes the summary period; and a file heard by a committee takes the committees’ period. The period appears next to the litigation degree in the case file and its form, and under every recorded judgment. That is why the court or body and the case type need to be recorded accurately from the moment the file is opened. And if a lawyer notices that a period needs correcting, the right thing is to correct it once in the settings, not to change the proposed deadline on each judgment separately.
The starting values of the appeal periods are taken from the Qatari laws in force, but they are only a starting point: the office’s lawyers review them and adjust them in line with the provisions in force, and legal responsibility for deadlines remains with the office.
Where you see deadlines: the dashboard and the agenda
An alert that arrives once may be read in a hurry and then forgotten, so deadlines need a fixed place where you see them every day. On the dashboard, the “Deadlines to watch” section gathers upcoming appeal and grievance deadlines, and in the agenda, appeals, grievances and the expiry of powers of attorney and ID cards appear among the month’s dates. Every employee can switch on device notifications so alerts reach them on a phone or computer even when the system is closed.
Even so, alerts are no substitute for a short human review: an alert tells you the deadline is near, but not whether the statement of appeal is ready, whether the client has decided, or whether the lawyer in charge is on leave. So set aside a few minutes at a fixed weekly meeting in which the partner or the head of the litigation department goes through these questions with the team:
Every deadline expiring in the next two weeks: has work on the statement of appeal begun?
Every judgment recorded this week: has a second lawyer checked its proposed deadline?
Every judgment appealed or now final: has its deadline been closed?
Every recent order on petition: has the last day to file a grievance against it been recorded?
From the judgment to the next degree’s file
When the office decides to appeal, the next degree’s file is opened from the case file itself: the More button (⋯), then “Open appeal / cassation / execution”, then choose the new degree, the client’s capacity in it, the court or body hearing it and the new case number. The system creates a separate file linked to the original one and copies the client, the subject, the opponents and the team into it, so none of that is entered again.
A separate file for each degree keeps the figures accurate: appeal hearings do not get mixed up with first-instance hearings, and each degree’s statistics stay correct. After appealing, tick “Judgment appealed” on the original judgment so its alert stops. And if the next degree’s file was already registered separately, link it to the original file with “Link to another case”, so the whole dispute stays connected in one place.
The same deadline matters to you when the judgment is in your client’s favour: whether it passes without an appeal, or the opponent appeals, is information the office builds its next step on. So a judgment won is recorded the same way, and its deadline stays visible until it is closed: by recording the appeal and opening the next degree with your client’s capacity in it, or by ticking “Final / irrevocable judgment”. If the dispute ends in execution, once the executory formula has been obtained, its option is ticked on the judgment and an “Execution” file is opened.
Orders on petition and the last day for a grievance
Orders on petition are issued quickly and forgotten quickly, and the deadlines for grievances against them need the same tracking as judgments. So in Murafe, an order is registered as a case with the case type “order on petition”, together with the “last day for a grievance” as set by the office’s lawyer. The deadline then appears under “Deadlines to watch” on the dashboard and in the agenda, and the lawyer in charge and the team are alerted seven days and then two days before it. Recording the deadline on the day the order is issued matters more here than in any other file, because the file of an order often has no upcoming hearing to serve as a reminder. When the grievance is filed:
Create a case with the case type “grievance”.
Specify who is filing the grievance: the client or the opponent.
Choose “the order on petition being challenged”.
The system links the two files automatically with the link type “grievance against an order on petition”, and the grievance-deadline alerts on the order stop.
The system’s limits and the office’s responsibility
Any deadline-tracking system is a tool for reminders and organisation, not a substitute for the lawyer’s own assessment. It proposes the deadline from the periods set in it and alerts you before it runs out; but checking the date the period starts in each case, checking the provisions in force, and the decision to appeal itself remain the responsibility of the office and its lawyers. These practices help the system and the lawyer work together:
A second check by another lawyer of every appeal deadline before it is confirmed.
Updating the appeal periods in the settings as soon as the legislation is amended.
Recording the office’s decision on every judgment: to appeal or not, and who made that decision.
Informing the client in writing of the outcome of the judgment and of the office’s position on an appeal.
Make deadline tracking part of the office’s culture, not one person’s job. A new lawyer learns in their first week that a judgment is recorded on the day; the secretaries know where to see upcoming deadlines; and the partner reviews them every week. When everyone knows their role in this chain, a missed deadline is no longer a risk that hangs on one particular person’s vigilance.
Questions on this topic
Murafe proposes the last day to appeal when the judgment is recorded, from the judgment’s date and the appeal period set in the settings for its degree and the type of case. The lawyer reviews the deadline and changes it where needed, the office’s lawyers review the starting values of the periods, and legal responsibility for deadlines remains with the office.
It arrives twice, seven days before the last day and then two days before, for the lawyer in charge and the case team. The deadline stays visible on the dashboard and in the agenda until it is closed.
From the judgment itself: the “Judgment appealed” option if an appeal has been filed, or the “Final / irrevocable judgment” option if the judgment has become final. Either one closes the deadline and stops its alerts.
Yes. When a case is registered with the case type “order on petition”, the “last day for a grievance” is entered; it appears on the dashboard and in the agenda, the lawyer and their team are alerted seven days and then two days before it, and the alerts stop once the grievance is recorded and linked to the order.
