Deadline and advance reminder

A deadline is a fixed date — an advance reminder is a planned warning before the date. This distinction is fundamental in legal work: the lawsuit must be filed by June 14, but the brief must be written by June 12. The termination notice period ends on September 30, but whoever starts writing on September 30 is too late.

In LEGALinhouse every deadline carries one configurable advance reminder. For long contracts with long termination notice periods it is typically set early — for example 90 days before the date — so the decision has time to mature.

Working days, public holidays and your own calendar

The lead time counts in working days — weekends and public holidays do not count. That is not a detail: a deadline on Wednesday 8 April with three working days' lead time lands, without holiday awareness, on Good Friday. A warning on a day when nobody is in the office is not a warning.

A working day here is Monday to Friday minus statutory public holidays — deliberately not the same as the German Werktag: a Saturday is a Werktag, which is exactly why § 108(3) AO, § 26(3) SGB X and § 31(3) VwVfG each have to name Saturday separately. The advance reminder answers the question when must the work start, and work starts on days the office is staffed.

The nine nationwide German public holidays are built in and are never counted — you do not have to enter or maintain anything for that.

What you enter yourself

Everything no federal statute knows is yours to define: in the settings your organisation keeps its own list of non-working days — and that list governs:

  • the public holidays of your Land — Fronleichnam, Allerheiligen, Reformationstag, Buß- und Bettag;
  • 24 and 31 December — not statutory holidays, but days on which hardly any office is staffed;
  • bridge days and company holidays.

There is deliberately no Land field. What governs is the list you maintain, not an assignment the system guesses for you.

The deadline itself is never moved

Non-working days affect only the lead time — that is, when you are reminded. They never move the due date.

That is deliberate. Whether a deadline shifts because it falls on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday follows the applicable procedural regime — § 108(3) AO, § 26(3) SGB X and § 31(3) VwVfG extend it, and there are provisions that do not. Your legal department makes that call against the relevant regime; a calendar does not. LEGALinhouse warns earlier; it leaves the due date standing.

Daily notifications

Every advance reminder creates a notification on the day it triggers, for the responsible employee. The notification does not disappear but stays open until it is actively acknowledged or the deadline is completed. Daily morning digest plus in-app marker next to every affected matter.

What happens when someone is on holiday?

Every deadline can have a coverage assignment. If an advance reminder triggers and the primary owner is not active in the system, the notification automatically goes to the assigned coverage. No one needs to reassign their deadlines individually two weeks before vacation.

Where deadlines come from

Deadlines arise in LEGALinhouse from many sources — and all end up in the same calendar, with the same warning logic:

  • Manually: Whoever notes an appointment creates a deadline with an advance reminder.
  • From contracts: Termination and renewal dates are calculated automatically (see contract management).
  • From authority letters: Incoming letters are checked by the AI for deadlines (e.g. response periods, opposition windows). Suggestion in the inbox; acceptance by the employee.
  • From court dates: Hearing dates, response deadlines, appeal periods.
  • From receivables: Dunning level transitions, statute of limitations.
  • From dismissal letters: The deadline for an unfair-dismissal claim runs from the recorded delivery; until then LEGALinhouse counts provisionally from the day of sending and says so in the subject. If the delivery is entered later, the deadline moves with it; if it ends on a weekend or a nationwide public holiday, the next working day applies.

Calendar integration

Deadlines should be visible where you already look. LEGALinhouse exports the deadline calendar as a standard calendar feed that integrates into common calendar applications (read-only subscription). So deadlines and advance reminders sit in the same calendar as your meetings — without anyone having to copy them manually.

The source of truth stays in the system: whoever completes a deadline does so in LEGALinhouse, not in the calendar — otherwise the audit trail falls apart.

Escalation and coverage

A deadline still open one day before the date escalates: an additional notification goes to the primary owner and the coverage. A missed deadline is logged in the audit log as missed — not hidden. If a deadline is deliberately allowed to lapse (termination intentionally not declared), this is documented with reasoning. So afterwards it is traceable whether it was a decision or an oversight.