Collision check
During the collision check, a lawyer checks whether he or his colleagues in the law firm have not already represented, represented or advised the possible opponent in the same legal matter, or whether he or his colleagues are otherwise involved in this legal matter within the meaning of §§ 45 , 46 Federal Lawyers' Act were concerned.
Example: The client Meier asks the lawyer Schulze to represent him in a labor law matter against the Schmitz company. The lawyer uses his process or file register to check whether the law firm represents, advised or represented Schmitz in this matter. If this is the case, he has to reject the mandate.
Consideration
During the collision check, the lawyer will always weigh up whether he or she will accept the requested mandate. Without violating professional standards, he can accept a mandate against a previous client if the mandate relationship with the previous client has ended in the meantime. An important indicator for this case is if the previous client has already hired another lawyer to represent the lawyer in the specific case.
Technical handling
Now that the vast majority of lawyers keep the process or file register in electronic form, the collision check is possible with little effort. The prerequisite, however, is that the law firms have clear guidelines for collecting client data and that compliance with these regulations is monitored. In particular with supra-local law firms , the risk of collision is great if the data is not synchronized promptly.
In earlier years, chronological manual records were kept for each year, which had to be checked manually to check for collisions.
