Legal Village

Valuable though this approach may be, Fiona Woolf is an enemy of the english language.

http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/archives/156

Posted by Nearly Legal | 3/03/2007

I left the City 15 years ago in order to improve my work life balance and am now happily employed as a solicitor in local government. I would have stayed had more flexible working been available then.

The question which has always concerned me is why does it benefit employers to have assistant solicitors working such long hours? Surely lack of sleep must lead to mistakes and low productivity. Wouldn't it be better to have a larger team of people with individuals working shorter hours?

Posted by diana williams | 26/02/2007

I have 30 years qualified experience having created my own firm with 12 staff.

I have happy Clients, happy staff, a profitable debt free business and an enviable claims and complaints record.

The worst thing about the profession is something that ruins the whole experience for me and often makes me yearn for retirement even though I know I am as good at the job and as good for the profession and the public as is reasonably possible.

It is the matter of over regulation which is moving inexorably towards external micromanagement of every law firm.

It is all very well creating mountains of time consuming documentation together with training and monitoring systems but the fact is that I achieve the required results without any need for all that and therein lies the secret of my commercial success within the profession.

If someone like me who can do what is called for naturally and instinctively is forced into the 'best practice' template then I may as well close down the firm and stay in bed.

All my profitability will disappear, I will be prevented from doing what I most enjoy and what I am best at and will become a clerk doing the bidding of less able people who regard themselves as my masters.

When I read the semi blackmail and alarmism from system suppliers and training providers I despair and all pleasure that I derive from my day to day achievements disappears.

Pressure from such people and from the ever growing empire building of regulators and government is entirely self defeating and needs to be brought back to a more sensible and economic scale.

There must be many in the profession sharing such a view and it is time we bagan to make our feelings felt.

I am shortly to be required to attend management courses that will have no relevance to me whatever and will simply enhance my feelings of depression and paranoia.

We should get back to the position where those of us who obviously know what we are doing should be left to do things in our own ways subject only to light handed and respectful monitoring visits which in themselves would be wholly unobjectionable.

Posted by Stephen Wilde | 23/02/2007

I SHALL ATTEND THE MEETING TO BE ORGANIZED BY TARA TO EXPRESS GRIEVANCES OF THE LAWYERS ALL OVER THE WORLD AND TO FIND OUT WAYS AND MEANS TO SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS.

Posted by Y.V.CHALAPATHY RAO | 23/02/2007

I am fascinated by Fiona's Woolf's initiative about the Quality of Life debate. I am not a sceptic but nevertheless feel that even at this stage of any debate a note of realism needs to be inserted into the discussion. I left private practice a few years ago and now I teach many subjects for the profession including professional conduct and soft skills, both for trainees and the more senior practitioners.
I was a Council Member for eight years as well.
The initiative comes at the same time as the unfortunate suicide of the solicitor working in the City. This was followed last week by several articles in the Times from young solicitors who are clearly disillusioned with their lot in the larger firms.
Further, we have an interesting article in the LS Gazette recently about the way the larger firms ensure that for public consumption, they try to keep the figures for profit per partner as high as possible; by letting equity partners go and not making others up to equity share. This makes it a real challenge to get to equity in the larger firms. Certainly you must signal that you will go anywhere, do anything, achieve all your targets and demonstrate total committment to the firm.
The effect is to send a clear message that if you try to ensure a sensible work life balance, you stand no chance of being approved for equity as the channel becomes ever more narrow. I have dozens of delegates telling me how disillusioned they are and they would never tell anyone else; not partners of course, but not even friends as they don't want to be thought as anything other than totally dedicated and committed. They are, after all, being paid a small fortune (in comparison to many) for the responsibility and the experience they have. It is difficult to see how the pattern can be changed. The work that is done has to be to the highest possible standard. It is very specialised and one mistake is a disaster. Competition is intense (within the firm and with other firms) and the culture is so rigidly hierachical that in most firms it is stifling.
I mention these matters not to offer instant solutions but to add to the debate, I hope.

Posted by Stephen Hammett | 22/02/2007

I regret that The Gazette editorial has not used the tragic death of the young man empoyed at Freshfields who died at the Tate as an opportunity to help in this work/life debate. Getting the funds for the LPC and then finding an training contract is tough. Many people who would like to work in less pressured and less fiancially rewarding posts than city firms offer are very easily presuaded to take the deal they offer. Firms are recruiting mostly from 20 year old undergrads with little experience of working life at all, let alone the realities of taking the last train home night fer night feeling like a zombie.

Once in, the golden handcuffs can be very hard to shake off. The allure of partnership can be dazzling but in reality the goals posts are set fairly narrowly.

To give support to the view that these people are in a Faustian pact is cruel. I worked in a city firm for a while and most of my colleagues did not strike me as having sold their souls. They were bright, ambitious and hooked into a culture with increasingly narrow options for getting out.

It can be a very macho workplace and firms need to see what positive steps they can take to ensure that stress is recognised and managed. Many of today's partners were contemporaries of mine and they weren't inhuman 20 years ago and I do not suppose that they are now. They have, however, led relatively narrow lives of plenty and success which have been rewarded finacially. Perhaps firms could encourage the 'get out and live a bit' lifestyle? How about swapping people in and out of LPC and university teaching posts? What about more sabbaticals? How about secondments to more average working conditions - be it within the legal sector or otherwise?

Firms which must be profitabel and quality-driven need to consider what value people have to the organisation - other than as units of production.

Posted by sue nelson | 22/02/2007