Traditional high street law firms are under attack on every front. The recession reduces their bread and butter property work and they face ever rising overheads and staff costs. The solution for some firms has been to specialise and to gain competitive advantage by adopting a more businesslike approach and IT solutions.
Three years ago we founded Blacklaws Davis in south-east London, with a focus on family and children work. We attained both Lexcel and Investors in People status. This involved considerable management time but was justified by the business benefits – including better risk management and lower professional indemnity premiums. We also wanted to demonstrate to our staff that we were committed to running an efficient, modern practice with opportunities for career development.
With wafer thin margins on legal aid, which still accounts for 80 per cent of our income, we realised that a dedicated case management system was needed. We worked closely with our supplier to tailor the system, adding workflows which enabled our staff to work more productively. It is still very much an ongoing process.
In my role as a Law Society Council Member, I lead on discussions with the Legal Services Commission for the Society. I am acutely aware of the very real pain which is being suffered by practices up and down the country undertaking publicly funded work.
Many of those practitioners talked to me about their concerns and from that grew an idea of how we could work together. We began to recruit a small number as consultants to our own practice. Some had been working in departments of mixed practices, others were sole practitioners. Each of them was highly skilled and dedicated. If they had given up practice they would have been a loss both to the profession and society. All had a common bond: a desire to continue their work but in a way which did not expose them or their families to financial strains.
Hybrid model
Our model developed as a hybrid. As London’s largest specialist family law practice, we undertake a large amount of care work. Many of our consultants are highly experienced practitioners who not only brought their own connection to the firm but also act as court advocates for our staff. This helped us to grow and also gave greater continuity for the client – as the consultant would often remain “hands on” working with our staff between court appointments.
The arrangement has to be mutually beneficial: for the firm it offers the possibility of lower office overheads, with consultants working from home using remote connection to our systems. In addition, it means we have a more flexible workforce and the encouragement to adopt leaner working methods, including scanning and a move towards paperless files.
For the consultant, we offered, in some cases, an additional source of work (which they would not have had on a purely virtual basis), the ability to work flexibly on the days and at times which suited them and the opportunity to be part of a bigger organisation, which offered support, both morally and technically. Our fee-share agreements are designed to be both fair and attractive to consultants.
The major benefit for them, however, is the perceived freedom from the bureaucracy of running their own business. Working together in this way we can achieve much more than the sum of the parts.
As we have grown we have been able to recruit specialist managers who have shared our vision and bring with them outside experience in systems and methods of working which we would, quite simply, have been unable to afford as a traditional firm. They have come from very different types of firm and organisation, bringing with them an extra-added dimension to what is predominantly a legal aid practice. This gives us a valuable insight into a very different world, and the ability to adapt their practices and create solutions which work for us.
Cultural issues
We work hard to integrate our consultants into the practice and to create a feeling of a community. We know that working alone can create feelings of isolation and the ability to talk over issues with us and fellow consultants can be both reassuring and beneficial in spreading knowledge and understanding. It also highlights areas of specialism, which adds to our service offering. We can develop additional work areas – such as mediation – which help us diversify. With greater users to spread the cost we can devote time and money to developing new resources. We have invested in a new intranet and are moving towards internet protocol telephony so that consultants will have the option of linking into our internal telephone system.
We have achieved much and feel there is immense potential for this structure – both for ourselves and other firms. We were deeply honoured to be shortlisted for the Law Society’s Legal Excellence Award in Innovation this year as well as being finalists in the Thames Gateway Business Awards.
Accolades are one thing: what propels us is the feeling that, by adapting to change, we are ensuring we can continue to deliver front-line services to some of the most deprived and vulnerable in our communities.
We feel we have created a sustainable model, offering the benefits of a traditional firm allied to flexible resources and backed up with first-rate systems. We are continuing to grow, adding new consultants each month and we aim to expand into other social welfare areas, so that we can provide a holistic service to our clients and ensure that we are able to cater for the many needs they present. This would have been unthinkable previously as the costs of expansion and risks would have been too great.
More on the IT used by the firm
An integrated practice management and case management system has been key to our success. We installed TFB’s Partner for Windows when the firm was founded and have since developed this with bespoke workflows to increase fee earner’s productivity. We selected TFB as they were a firm with a proven track record, had a significant userbase (over 400 firms use the product) and we have been pleased both with the functionality of the system and the support we have received.
Our systems run on our own servers located at our Deptford head office, with VPN connections linking our other sites in London and Cambridge, as well as the consultants who work with us. We have found this to be a more economical solution for our needs to date although we would not rule out moving to “software as a service” hosted at a supplier’s premises, particularly for reasons of disaster recovery.
We have a maintenance agreement with an IT company who are responsible for monitoring and maintaining our hardware and software, other than the practice and case management systems. We will be looking to issue a formal tender for those services for a 2 to 3 year contract period in 2010. One of the key factors for us is to find an IT partner who has the experience and vision to help us develop the way we run the business, particularly as we move towards a “paperless” environment and seek to integrate our IT and telephony systems. It is our aim to digitise all our files in the next year and we are fortunate in having recently merged with another practice specialising in housing law, who have been operating a virtual paper-free environment for some years. We therefore have access to considerable practical experience in this area.
Our website was designed by Conscious Solutions. We maintain, add and update the majority of the content ourselves, using tools developed by Conscious who also provide training to our staff. This enables us to keep the website up-to-date and relevant in a very cost-effective way.
All our staff can access their emails and diaries remotely using Outlook Web Access: some staff who work occasionally from home and all consultants have access to the entirety of the firm’s systems using VPN connections. These allow them access to the firm’s intranet (which we have developed as a major resource in the last year), Jordan’s Online, Outlook and the practice and case management systems. Our consultants and staff use a variety of desktop PCs, laptops, netbooks and BlackBerrys.
The majority of our consultants are based within the M25. However, we have been recruiting further afield, with our most recent consultant living in Nottingham and working from our Cambridge office.
As we gain experience in running our hybrid model, we are finding ways of being even more efficient, so that the ratio of support staff to fee earners and consultants falls. What this means in practice is that we are able to absorb further consultants more easily and without, in theory, limiting their number.
Our office staff and consultants work seamlessly on cases, mixing teams of virtual and non-virtual lawyers. Many of our consultants are very experienced, some with higher rights of audience, who often undertake court hearings. This reduces our need to instruct Counsel and provides greater continuity for the client. We already use netbooks for court appointments and as we move further towards complete digitisation, it will allow the accessing online of every document we hold and not just the papers contained in a bundle, with the ability to search electronically.
We have a dedicated extranet for our consultants, accessible online from any computer with an internet connection. Our consultants also meet physically and we are creating “buddy” networks whereby they can support each other and conduct supervision.
We are looking at a number of ways of providing CPD training including webinars; we are also an accredited trainer.
A major project for the coming year is the replacement of our telephone system. We want to install a VoIP system which will give us the potential to create a single reception for the firm as well as allowing our consultants across the country their own extension. Whilst there is a capital outlay, it will provide effectively free telephone calls between everyone in the firm as well as creating a feeling of “belonging”.
Christina Blacklaws is founder and Senior Partner of Blacklaws Davis LLP.
