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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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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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Sidley—James Inness

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Partner joins capital markets team in London office

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Firm announces appointment of partner as UK general counsel

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Firm appoints first chief marketing officer to drive growth strategy

NEWS
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NLJ this week: CPR tweak closes third-party disclosure gap
A seemingly dry procedural update may prove potent. In his latest 'Civil way' column for NLJ this week, Stephen Gold explains that new CPR 31.12A—part of the 193rd update—fills a ‘lacuna’ exposed in McLaren Indy v Alpa Racing
NLJ this week: Court of Appeals wrestles with Mazur fallout
The long-running Mazur saga edged towards its finale as the Court of Appeal heard arguments on whether non-solicitors can ‘conduct litigation’. Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Dominic Regan of City Law School reports from a packed courtroom where 16 wigs watched Nick Bacon KC argue that Mr Justice Sheldon had failed to distinguish between ‘tasks and responsibilities’
NLJ this week: Appeal court reins in ‘wrong defendant’ switcheroo

The Court of Appeal has slammed the brakes on claimants trying to swap defendants after limitation has expired. In Adcamp LLP v Office Properties and BDB Pitmans v Lee [2026] EWCA Civ 50, it overturned High Court rulings that had allowed substitutions under s 35(6)(b) of the Limitation Act 1980, reports Sarah Crowther of DAC Beachcroft in this week's NLJ

NLJ this week: Driving test fraudsters steer towards jail
Cheating in driving tests is surging—and courts are responding firmly. Writing in NLJ this week, Neil Parpworth of De Montfort Law School charts a rise in impersonation and tech-assisted fraud, with 2,844 attempts recorded in a year
NLJ this week: Deepfakes demand data law muscle
As AI-generated ‘deepfake’ images proliferate, the law may already have the tools to respond. In NLJ this week, Jon Belcher of Excello Law argues that such images amount to personal data processing under UK GDPR
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