Eleven. I counted eleven chase emails in one inbox on one Tuesday, three of them about the same mortgage offer. Each took about four minutes, each was polite, and none of them was legal work.
The fix is a list. Every matter has the documents it still needs, with the date each one was asked for. For a purchase that might be the signed TR1, the mortgage offer, the gifted deposit letter and the ID for the person giving it. For a probate matter it is the death certificate, the will and the bank letters. The list lives in a Google Sheet or in the practice system, whichever you already look at.
On day 3 a reminder goes to whoever owes the document. On day 7 a second, slightly firmer. On day 14 a third, and the fee earner is copied in so they know. The wording is yours, taken from chases you have already sent, so the client cannot tell the difference. The moment the file lands, by email, by upload link or by the portal, the chasing for that item stops. Nobody gets a reminder for something they sent an hour ago, which is the thing that makes clients cross.
Weekends are skipped. Bank holidays too. If the other side's solicitor owes the document, the chase goes to them, worded for a solicitor, and your client gets a short line saying it has been asked for.
The fee earner sees a column, per matter, of what is in and what is out. That is all they see unless they ask for more.
This is the kind of thing we build. It runs in your own accounts. Who at your firm sent the last chase email, and what were they meant to be doing instead?