All articles by David Pickup – Page 10
-
OpinionBOOK REVIEW: Legal Project Management, Pricing, and Alternative Fee Arrangements
This book looks at how to be attractive and therefore competitive to win and keep clients.
-
OpinionWhat sort of question is that?
Form-filling is increasingly becoming part of the job. But how many solicitors answer the questions honestly?
-
OpinionChanging times
Charging by time only is unpopular with clients and has given various governments excuses to cut legal aid. Maybe a new system is needed.
-
OpinionBOOK REVIEW: Psychopaths – An Introduction
This little book looks at the development of study into this disorder, what it is and how to deal with sufferers.
-
OpinionWhere has everyone gone?
It is that time of year again. Everyone has disappeared for summer – but, with mobiles and email around, it’s getting harder to switch off completely.
-
News
PII renewals: just like Christmas
This week the staff asked when we are closing for Christmas. They want to make plans, and why not?
-
News
Having a choice of lawyers
The right to choose a lawyer is part of our accepted rights, yet threatened by the criminal legal aid proposals. How essential is that right? When you last needed a doctor, banker, priest, dentist or schoolteacher, what choice did you actually have? At best you probably had a limited choice ...
-
News
PCT: reverse psychology
Two questions. Question one: Have you signed the petition protesting about price-competitive tendering? Question two: Do you think it will make the slightest difference? I wonder if we have got it completely wrong in our protesting. The more we protest the less likely the protests ...
-
News
To hear is to obey
Don’t clients sometimes drive you mad? Happily this won’t happen any more because they are no longer ‘clients’ but ‘consumers’. I am grateful to the people who responded to my last blog by pointing out the Legal Ombudsman’s site refers to them as consumers. I also note chief ombudsman Adam ...
-
News
A glass half full
Despite not wishing to be thought a grumpy old lawyer I decided to look at the Legal Ombudsman’s recent report, The price of separation: Divorce-related legal complaints and their causes. This report made the news as it features lots of stories about wicked lawyers. The ...
-
News
Pro bono pressure
My comments on complaints and the pressures of regulation seem to have hit the mark. Thank you for your responses. Strangely no one has written to say ‘let's have more regulation, audits, and KPIs’ or ‘let's make the complaints regime more onerous for us’. I don’t think that is because ...
-
News
Doing the washing
There is said to be a small village where the only industry is one in which dwellers take in each other’s washing. The more I think about it the more likely that will happen to the solicitors’ profession. Not that we will take in each other’s laundry. No, nothing as ...
-
News
Complaints, horrible jumpers and ill-fitting socks
If you look at the recent legal press you might be forgiven for thinking that there is at least one growing area of law that is doing well in the recession – complaints. We get bombarded daily with calls to deal with them better, quicker and more expensively.
-
News
Training solicitors – a qualified success
Tucked away in the new year’s press was an announcement of an apprenticeship route to qualification as a solicitor. I wondered why and when the profession abandoned the five-year article route. Over the years there have been, as there is now, a number of ...
-
News
First day back
One morning during the holiday I popped into the office when the building was well and truly closed. The telephone was ringing and I answered it to give a mouthful to the caller about lawyers needing holidays as well, but it was only a person wishing the firm a happy ...
-
News
Pre-Christmas rush
I love this time of year: the decorations, the lights, so much to do, everyone else making money, clients. In fact everyone wants everything to be done before Christmas. How I miss those seasonal contact/access applications. At least the pre-Christmas rush of people queuing outside shops to do their shoplifting ...
-
News
A holistic approach
I have recently been on two courses on the forthcoming changes to the legal aid scheme. One was organised by the Law Society and the other by the Legal Services Commission. They were, more accurately, roadshows presented around the country and most were well supported. I will not say which ...
-
News
Flotsam and jetsam
On a slow day recently I blew the dust off some files and looked in cabinet drawers that had not seen the light of day for many a year. When we started this firm I had one file for administration; now I have cabinets full of papers. So this was, ...
-
News
Hiring and firing - duty solicitor rotas
There is scene near the beginning of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd where the hero has just lost his farm. He goes to the local town for the annual hiring fair when farm workers get taken on in new jobs. Gabriel joins the crowd of unemployed men looking ...
-
News
How to be an excellent work experience student
It is probably safe to come out of my room. Throughout the summer we have had the usual crop of internees, work experience candidates and volunteers - call them what you will. They were all keen, pleasant, polite, and frighteningly intelligent and some even really impressive. Work experience is an ...