Nobody could say which draft went to the client

A draft goes to three colleagues for comment. Three edited copies come back. Someone consolidates them and sends one to the client. A month later the question is what exactly the client received, and the answer is in an inbox.

Attachments are the mechanism

Email is the most convenient way to share a draft and the worst way to keep one. Every attachment is a fork, and forks are only reconciled by someone's attention.

Marking what left the building

Internal drafts matter less. What matters is an unambiguous record of the version that went out, when, and to whom — which is the version the firm will be held to.

Access by matter

In a multi-office firm, document access tends to follow whoever was on the email chain. Access that follows the matter is both better practice and simpler to explain to a client asking who in the firm can see their papers.