Assistant Solicitor – Eluned Roberts. Joined June 2018 to the Manchester office working
4 days per week not Wednesday. Currently on maternity leave, due to return December
2019/Jan 2020 to Oaklands. 7 years PQE. Assistant Solicitor – Claire Higham – 2 years PQE. Claire has a significant amount of
experience pre-qualification.
Assistant Solicitor – David Wilkinson. Qualifies March 2019. Paralegal – Lisa Woodworth. Secretary – Sarah Grillo. Starts Mid-March 2019.
Overall Evaluation
The team keeps going from strength to strength and there is no sign of that abating. We are busier than ever with January 2019 being our busiest on record for the last 2 years – 52 new matters many of which were active from the start. More and more cases seem to be litigious which is good for fees. Our original fee income estimate for 2018/19 was £1.25M and we will achieve £1.5M by the end of the financial year given the arrival of additional fee earners during the financial year. The challenge will be now to achieve an increased target in the coming financial year although pipeline new matters appear to support this projection and justifies the addition of a new recruit. Who knows what effect Brexit might have generally on our team generally. Will we have another recession? In terms of IT this is still a work in progress. Proclaim has been great for our team in terms of e-sign client care, automating some processes and pre populating some forms etc. MH still working on this although it is time consuming but the benefits are not to be underestimated. Bespoke workflows for divorce, notices of severance, new client enquiries/prospects are finalised and are live. There is more work to do in relation to children act matters and matrimonial finances. We are already well on our way to becoming paperlite but there is more to be done. We should be paperless in due course and team laptops are being purchased to encourage this to take place. MH has been trialling this and it works very well. Video hearings are ahead for the family team and we have to adapt as our ĐlieŶt͛s do to teĐhŶologLJ. MH regularlLJ has meetings with clients overseas or remotely via Facetime etc. Again this works well. We have reduced requirements for secretarial support given how we have embraced the technology available to us. This has led us to be able to promote Lisa Woodworth to a paralegal since last financial year and she has taken this opportunity up and is really enjoying it; she is a success story and positive news for the firm. At present we operate with 3 secretaries to 14 fee earners a ratio of almost 6:1 when taking into account part time working. This is a significant decrease in the support the team requires to work efficiently. In reality this is the bare minimum we can operate with.
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