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Why your firm should support working mothers to the hilt
If you are going to balance the demands of work and childcare, and stay sane, you need to adapt, and with any luck your firm will adapt with you. In doing so you will both win, and your respective productivity will soar. When I had my son, I realised just how lucky I was. Not only did I have the incredible support of my, and my husband’s, family through this life-changing time, but I had a firm that offered me complete flexibility and control over my return to business life.
Time to get off the dancefloor and embrace the ridiculous
Spring is in the air, and our New Year resolutions should have formed learned behaviour by now, so where to focus our vision next? Making sure we help our firms have a future-focused toolkit has been top of my list over recent months and, talking with the law firm leaders in our network, it’s interesting to see what they are prioritising. While some of the usual regulatory suspects remain on their radar, they are focusing their energies on many less conventional aspects of leadership, embracing psychology and communication in ways that would have been unimaginable in a law firm of yesterday.
Developing future leaders
“If we were running real businesses, we would be identifying future leaders in their 20s and 30s and fast-tracking them – whereas in most law firms people first have to prove themselves as a lawyer, and earn high fees, and only then, when they are probably in their 40s or 50s might we think about whether they have what it takes to lead the business.” This was a casual, almost throw-away comment from a colleague co-facilitating a managing partner retreat with me back in February, but it set the scene for the next 24 hours – how should law firms identify and then develop their future leaders?
Do I need consent for direct marketing?
With less than 50 working days until GDPR takes effect on 25 May 2018, many businesses are starting to consider the hot topic of whether their marketing lists will still be valid. But it’s not just GDPR that needs to be considered. Under the Data Protection Act, “an individual is entitled at any time by notice in writing… to require the data controller… to cease, or not to begin processing for the purposes of direct marketing”. But the majority of the rules around direct marketing can actually be found in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.
Why people vote for law firm leaders
Very few people leap at the chance of becoming the leader of a law firm. It is, after all, a fiendishly difficult job. Most are encouraged to stand for election and then must run the gauntlet of peer interrogation and appraisal. From our work with many different law firms over the years, I think it’s possible to identify the reasons why some leadership candidates get elected and others don’t. This is what I’ve learned along the way. The biggest challenge for any leadership candidate is to get the agreement of intelligent, free-spirited and opinionated legal professionals to relinquish some control and be managed.
Don’t get caught out by the traditional equity partnership model
It’s no secret that these are challenging times for some of the UK law sector as it tries to keep up with emerging digital trends and increasing demand from clients. But there is buoyancy in the market and opportunities for those businesses that are agile and brave enough to challenge the status quo – the traditional equity partnership model. We’ve seen it all too often where partners have been duped into putting their assets against a failing business that is riddled with debt. We’ve even received calls from partners to discuss bankruptcy and that the possibility of moving house is no longer possible, due to the LLP they joined going into liquidation.
Making the apprenticeship levy work
The apprenticeship reforms were introduced to put quality at the forefront of training and skills improvement and to give employers more control over developing their workforce. At Browne Jacobson we have been doing just that. Our existing legal apprentices follow the paralegal standards and our plans for 2018 include recruitment of a further 12 paralegal apprentices in September, together with developing many of our own teams by offering apprenticeships in business administration, first-line management, chartered manager degrees and senior leaders master’s degrees.
Contribute to your law firm’s success – Handle. Calls. Better.
Our ongoing mission is to help our law firm clients use the internet more effectively to grow their business. As such, from an online perspective, we look at every component of the journey their prospects make, from initial internet search to becoming a client, and even beyond that, helping our clients look in more detail at the experience they provide to their clients. We’ve never had any problem generating traffic for their websites. However, rankings and traffic are mere vanity metrics unless site visits are converting into good-quality enquiries which our clients can convert into profitable new business.
The perfect legal business?
Some people think it is easy to run – and to grow – a law firm. I feel like I have had a lifetime in lawyer and team management and in law firm ownership and leadership. Taking all of that experience (of things done right and wrong), add the experience gained from working with a host of law firms since I left private practice, and harnessing the clarity of thought I now enjoy that few managing partners could dream of whilst in the hot seat, I believe I can point to at least 10 pieces of jigsaw that a firm needs to come together – over and above efficient IT and a solid compliance and risk-management framework – to make up the perfect foundations for a high-performance legal business.
Why I believe law helps shape and change lives
Today we celebrate International Women’s Day and on Sunday Mother’s Day, so it seems quite poignant to talk about how my mum spurred me on to follow my dreams of being a lawyer, writes Gill Aitken, general counsel and Solicitor for HM Revenue & Customs. Every one of us have people standing alongside us to support, encourage and (sometimes) push us along the road to success. Unfortunately for my mum, her own career was cut short because of archaic rules and legislation that prevented married women from working in the civil service.
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