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22 February 2007 / Allan Carton
Issue: 7261 / Categories: Features , Profession
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A shared understanding

Allan Carton explains how getting closer to your clients helps build a better business

Clients take the legal work you do for granted. However complex it is, they assume you can deal with it if they have already chosen you. So, yes, make sure you and your colleagues get it right. But most clients would say: “So what? That’s what lawyers are paid to do.” Get it wrong and you’re in trouble. Rescue a client from a real jam and they may love you forever, but you can’t build a business around these occasional triumphs.

So assuming all the decent lawyers in your area provide legal work reasonably well, what would make someone choose one from the other? Recommendations? Yes, but what makes clients or your accountant enthusiastic enough about your practice to want to tell their friends and clients about you? Maybe because you are a specialist in some area, but usually there is more than one specialist in any area and just how specialised are most lawyers? Perhaps some genuine specialists can still

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Jurit LLP—Caroline Williams

Jurit LLP—Caroline Williams

Private wealth and tax team welcomes cross-border specialist as consultant

HFW—Simon Petch

HFW—Simon Petch

Global shipping practice expands with experienced ship finance partner hire

Freeths—Richard Lockhart

Freeths—Richard Lockhart

Infrastructure specialist joins as partner in Glasgow office

NEWS
Talk of a reserved ‘Welsh seat’ on the Supreme Court is misplaced. In NLJ this week, Professor Graham Zellick KC explains that the Constitutional Reform Act treats ‘England and Wales’ as one jurisdiction, with no statutory Welsh slot
The government’s plan to curb jury trials has sparked ‘jury furore’. Writing in NLJ this week, David Locke, partner at Hill Dickinson, says the rationale is ‘grossly inadequate’
A year after the $1.5bn Bybit heist, crypto fraud is booming—but so is recovery. Writing in NLJ this week, Neil Holloway, founder and CEO of M2 Recovery, warns that scams hit at least $14bn in 2025, fuelled by ‘pig butchering’ cons and AI deepfakes
After Woodcock confirmed no general duty to warn, debate turns to the criminal law. Writing in NLJ this week, Charles Davey of The Barrister Group urges revival of misprision or a modern equivalent
Family courts are tightening control of expert evidence. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Chris Pamplin says there is ‘no automatic right’ to call experts; attendance must be ‘necessary in the interests of justice’ under FPR Pt 25
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