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Qualified success

04 June 2009 / John Stacey-hibbert
Issue: 7372 / Categories: Features , Profession , Employment
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John Stacey-Hibbert believes staff are a firm's second greatest asset

Everyone knows that the greatest asset any law firm has is its clients. Client care therefore is, or should be, high on the business agenda. What, though, is a firm's second greatest asset? Arguably it is its staff. Without staff clients cannot be serviced and therefore the major asset is lost. However, investing and training in non-fee earners has never been high on the agenda of many law firms.

Efficiency

It is now some 12 years since the Research and Policy Planning Unit of The Law Society published its Research Study No 23—Paralegal Staff in Solicitors' Firms (which also covered legal secretaries as well as paralegal staff ) which concluded that paralegals can make a great contribution to the efficiency of solicitors' firms by helping to increase the efficiency of the legal profession and thereby command the confidence of its clients.

It is fair to say that, as a whole, the legal profession has not taken the conclusions of this report to heart, either

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

DWF—19 appointments

DWF—19 appointments

Belfast team bolstered by three senior hires and 16 further appointments

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Firm strengthens leveraged finance team with London partner hire

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Double hire marks launch of family team in Leeds

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Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
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