Legal Recruitment Blog

The Easiest and Quickest Way to Grow your Business There are 5 ways to grow your business – increase customers, get customers to buy more, increase the value of each transaction, increase prices or increase efficiency. By far the quickest and easiest way, according to expert pricing accountant Peter Hill, is simply to increase your prices. He issues a challenge to businesses – if you want to increase your profits in one, easy step, increase your prices by 5% immediately. A quick example would be a conveyancing quote I recently had. We contacted three law firms to get a price on selling a field (sale transaction is less than £20k) and got quotes of £475, £400 and £200. Thinking about it now – if the £200 quote had been £210 it still would have been the lowest price, and if I had been a bit distrustful of the low quote I would still have gone with the medium quote with a 5% increase at £420. Applying this to our own business does not really work, because in recruitment most of our busin...

Cut the Clutter on your Desk and save time I recently read an article about saving time – with tips including outsourcing everything you possibly can, delegating as much work as possible and avoiding meetings. One of the tips was to reduce the clutter on your desk because looking for documents and items can take up so much of your time. These are the three things to do with paperwork on your desk: 1. Delegate It 2. File it 3. Bin it Apparently most of the stuff we file away never gets seen again and in fact it would have been better to bin it from the outset. There is a professor in the USA who tips all his paperwork each month into a desk drawer and at the end of the month he throws the whole lot into the bin. I think this is extremely brave and would never dare to be so bold, but it is certainly one way to get rid of stuff off your desk! There should be no paperwork on your desk at the end of the day – instead it should be in a filing tray, an action tray or the bin. Stationery ...

We received a press release not that long ago from a well known telephone answering service - AlldayPa ( www.alldaypa.com - this is not a sponsored link - we don't get paid if you click it - but we are and have been clients for over 10 years now). They have released figures to say that 'The legal sector has seen a 60% increase in out of hours calls' - which has consequences for many law firms across the country. More and more clients are expecting calls to be answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it seems logical to suppose that this is a direct result of increased online and offline advertising. TV and Radio adverts are becoming commonplace, and it is natural for a client to call straight away, rather than wait for office hours.' They have not published any figures demonstrating the 60% increase in the past few years (which is as vague as it gets), but the crux of their research is promoting the fact that it may be worth firms considering out of hours call...

A new survey has been commissioned showing that 4 out of 10 solicitors would NOT encourage anyone to follow in their footsteps. Wesleyan for Lawyers managed to get hold of 103 'lawyers' to conduct this poll, which is pretty poor considering there are over 120,000 solicitors on the Roll in the UK and considerably more support staff and non-qualified fee earners. Very unrepresentative and a bit of a non-news story!  However I suspect the real figure is something above 60%. Why? 7 reasons. I cannot imagine anyone who deals with the Legal Aid Agency wanting to encourage anyone else to follow in their footsteps.  High street solicitors who have not got to partnership status are unlikely to suggest to anyone else that it really is a good idea to run up debts of £44,000 going through the education and training bits before earning a maximum salary of £40,000 for the remainder of their career.  City lawyers in my experience seem to hate their jobs, themselves, the lo...

Best Vacancy ever published by Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment Here follows the best legal job vacancy we have ever seen.  To apply, please email cv@ten-percent.co.uk, quoting the reference number AP81L500L.  Job Title: Lawyer Qualifications Needed: None - experience matters more.  Salary: £125,000 Areas of Law: Company Commercial Job Description: A lawyer is sought to deal with a mixed caseload of company commercial matters as and when they come in. At the moment the firm have no work coming in but expect lots in the future when Saturn comes into the delta currently occupied by Uranus. This is a very laid back firm dating from the 1960s and the partners have a very flexible attitude to free love. Sandals and gowns must be worn in the office. You will be expected to: Attend the office from 11am to 2pm for 3 days a week. Unlock the doors Switch on the lights Sit at your desk and drink coffee/tea/ovaltine Open a file occasionally Read a book  Eat...

I have just finished a business book called "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael Gerber, a fascinating if not slightly too American book on how to get a business working for you and not vice versa. I should start this article by saying that this is not a sales pitch and I have no financial interest in the book! Mr Gerber is keen to get people in business to stop and think about what they are doing. His key advice is to view your enterprise as a potential franchise and try to get it working like this as quickly as possible. In this way you can either prepare the company for sale, work out where you need to recruit staff or streamline processes and make the whole operation more efficient. He seems to be using some of the Six SIgma techniques that I am sure practice managers are starting to become aware of these days. Firstly take a look at yourself and your business. Why are you working? What are you working for? Does your current job or company give you the scope to achieve your...

A Psychic's 2013 New Year Predictions Revisited Last year we carried an article in our January Newsletter about predictions for 2013 by an expert  online psychic, Craig Hamilton-Parker (taken from www.psychics.co.uk). We have also included his 2014 predictions below to see how he does when we revisit in 2015. Mr Hamilton-Parker charges £1.53 per minute for his services, and looking at this list I suspect it is money well spent. Online Psychic Predictions for 2013 - how many did Craig get right? 1. War in the Middle East - February. Israel will attack Iran. Incorrect. Thank goodness. 2. Terrorist attack on Chicago in the summer. 1/2 marks - Boston in April. 3. Syrian uprising to continue. Iran to invade. 1/2 marks. Iran hasn't invaded. 4. Poor grain harvest to occur in Russia. Incorrect. Up 30% on 2012. 5. Robert Mugabe will be assassinated in the Autumn. Incorrect. 6. Revolution in China - June 2013. China to split up. Incorrect. 7. Google will be attacked by terrorists. Inco...