Prepare questions before you see a lawyer

A trader served with a GST show-cause notice books the first available slot with an advocate, then spends the opening fifteen minutes of a paid hour recounting dates, invoice numbers, and what the notice actually said — because nobody asked him to write any of it down first. By the time the advocate has the facts straight, half the meeting is gone before any advice has actually been given.

Vakil's consultation prep tool asks the questions a lawyer would ask first — what happened, when, who was involved, which documents exist — and turns the answers into a one-page briefing sheet the trader hands over at the start of the meeting. It organises what he already knows. It does not tell him what his case is worth, how strong it is, or what argument to make. That is precisely the work the paid hour is for.

The output is deliberately labelled a consultation preparation sheet, not a case assessment, and that label reflects what happens: Vakil asks the trader for facts he already possesses — the notice date, the tax period, the amount in question — and arranges them clearly. It never asks him to characterise those facts as strong or weak, and it never suggests what he should argue when responding to the notice. The moment a follow-up would require judging the merits rather than gathering another fact, the tool stops and leaves that ground for the advocate.

This boundary exists because organising facts and assessing a legal position are genuinely different skills, and only one requires a law degree. A briefing sheet listing the notice's date, the invoices in dispute, and the trader's own account of what happened is useful precisely because it stays neutral — it doesn't pre-load an opinion the advocate then has to either agree with or correct. An advocate reading a sheet that already argued a position would first have to figure out whether that framing held.

The adaptive follow-up questions widen coverage of the facts, not narrow toward a conclusion. If the trader mentions a partial payment was made, Vakil will ask when and how much, because a lawyer will want that detail — but it will not ask whether the payment discharges his liability, since that is an interpretation of law applied to facts, past the line this tool stays behind. The sheet is meant to be read once, at the start of the meeting, then set aside.