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04 June 2009 / John Stacey-hibbert
Issue: 7372 / Categories: Features , Profession , Employment
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Qualified success

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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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