Nothing in the third chaser should point backwards

“As per my previous email” is the phrase doing the damage. Not your tone in the rest of the message, not whether you said please, not whether you softened it with “I know you’re busy”. That clause and its relatives — “following up again”, “just circling back”, “I haven’t heard back”, “as I mentioned on the 14th” — carry the whole sting, and they are the easiest words in the email to delete.

Most people can feel that their third chaser reads badly. Very few can point at which words are causing it, so they attack the wrong layer: they add more politeness. An apology at the top, a “no rush at all” at the bottom, an emoji if things have got desperate. The result is worse, because now there is a backward reference wrapped in forced cheer, and the gap between the two is audible.

The sting is in the backward reference, not the politeness

Every reference to the earlier emails does the same job: it tells the client there is a running count, and that they are losing it. The content of the email might be a perfectly reasonable request for a bank statement. The frame says this is the third time.

What you wrote	What it tells the client	What to do with it
“As per my previous email”	You were sent this and ignored it	Delete. Open with the ask.
“Following up again”	I am keeping count	Delete. The word “again” has no recipient-side use.
“I haven’t heard back from you”	You are the one who has failed here	Delete. State what you need, not what you didn’t get.
“Gentle reminder”	I am being kind about something you should be embarrassed about	Delete. Nobody has ever read this as gentle.
“Still waiting on the below”	You are holding me up	Delete, and delete the quoted thread under it.
“Just checking in”	I have nothing new to say but wanted you to feel it	Replace with the one thing that changed.

None of these phrases communicates anything the client does not already know. They have the earlier email. They know it arrived. The reference adds no information and a great deal of weather.

Referencing the history turns a reply into an admission

This is the mechanism worth understanding, because it explains why the third chaser does worse than the first even when it is better written.

When your email names the history, replying to it means accepting the frame. The client cannot send you the document without implicitly conceding that they should have sent it a fortnight ago. So the cheap reply — “here you go” — is no longer available. What’s available is an apology plus an explanation plus the document, which is a bigger job than the one you actually asked for. That cost is paid at exactly the moment the client is skimming their inbox at ten past nine, deciding what is quick.

Most non-response is not refusal. It’s a thing that fell down the list. An email that makes picking it back up feel like an admission keeps it down the list.

Write the fourth email as though it were the first

The instruction is literal. Open a blank message. Do not reply to the thread, do not forward, do not quote. Write the request from scratch: what you need, why you need it, what format is fine, and what happens next. Name the document exactly as the client would recognise it, not as your file names it.

That means the email is longer than your usual chaser, and that’s correct. A three-line follow-up only works if the reader reconstructs the context, and the whole problem is that they haven’t. The Government Digital Service’s content design guidance for GOV.UK — the standard most UK public-sector writing is held to, checked 5 October 2026 — puts the main point first and keeps one clear action per piece of content. That is the shape you want: the ask in the first sentence, no preamble before it.

There’s a regulatory argument underneath this for some firms, though it is a general duty rather than a rule about chasers. The FCA’s Consumer Duty guidance, FG22/5 (July 2022), makes consumer understanding one of its four outcomes: communications should support customers in making informed decisions. The SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, in force since 25 November 2019, requires at paragraph 8.6 that you give clients information in a way they can understand. Neither is satisfied by an email whose meaning depends on a message the client can’t find.

Change exactly one thing

A fresh restatement that is otherwise identical to the last one is still a reprimand, just delivered by repetition. So change one element — and only one, so the change is visible.

1. The deadline. Not “as soon as possible”. A date, and the reason that date exists. If there is no real reason, don’t invent one; pick a different change.
2. The list. Cut it. If you asked for six things and have received two, ask for the single item that unblocks the next step and say the rest can wait. A shorter ask is the strongest thing you can change.
3. What happens next. Tell them what you’ll do with it and what the consequence of waiting is — the application pauses, the filing slips a month, the offer expires. Consequence stated flatly is not a threat. It’s the information they needed to rank the task.

If you cannot find one of these to change, the honest conclusion is that this email shouldn’t be sent today. Send it when something has actually moved.

The case for not writing it at all

There is a category of chaser that doesn’t have this problem, because it obviously isn’t a person: the automatic reminder. A scheduled message doesn’t resent anyone and nobody replies to it feeling judged. You can get that from a mailbox rule, a recurring task in your practice management system, a shared tracker your team updates, or a tool like ClientLoop that sends the reminders on a schedule.

The limit is real, though. Automation is good at the second and third nudge and bad at the fifth, where a human needs to work out whether the client is stuck, confused, or has quietly decided not to proceed. Automate the rhythm; keep the judgement.

When the history does belong somewhere

Sometimes you do need the record: a missed deadline with a cost attached, a matter you may have to withdraw from, a complaint forming. Then write it down — in the file note, the matter record, the CRM. That is where the chronology is useful and where, if it is ever needed, it will actually be looked at.

What it should not do is ride along in the chaser as atmosphere. You’re either escalating, in which case say so plainly and in full, or you’re asking again, in which case the history is noise that costs you the reply.

The test is simple enough to apply in ten seconds. Read your draft and ask whether a client who had never heard from you could act on it. If yes, send it. If the email only makes sense to someone who remembers the last two, you haven’t written a follow-up. You’ve written a receipt.