What the PA knew: an intriguing legal tale by Dawn Dixon

Author:Dawn Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784522384
Publisher: Panoma Press

So to the speech. Diane and I have only been working together at AD for a few weeks. In that time I had handed in my notice at RJW, moved to AD and completed the presentation. AD was now an LLP in 2004 and had taken up premises in Holborn.

Diane had worked with the Association of Women Solicitors for many years, becoming the Regional Chair of its London Group in 2006 and Chair of the National Group later. While on the committee she met many influential and inspiring lawyers, one of whom was an aspiring Nigerian Counsel who had closed her firm in the UK and opened a new one in Nigeria. Diane was invited by this colleague to speak at the Commonwealth Lawyers Association Conference in Nigeria. She was to talk about the business of law and we set about the task of finalising the presentation which I began to research many weeks ago before I left RJW.

As I mentioned, Diane had taken steps to change her business from a partnership to an LLP which in her mind was more akin to the business of a limited company. She decided that when she presented at the conference she needed to be as focused on the points she wished to make as she would be speaking to the Commonwealth lawyers who, in many aspects, were way behind the profession in England and Wales.

She challenged the Commonwealth lawyers to ask themselves what they felt the future of the legal profession meant to them, their careers, their firms and their practices, which she advised them would follow England and become big businesses. Diane felt that there were four main areas which governed law firms and we tried to explore these avenues in the preparation for the lecture. We had many arguments based on our individual personal experiences: Diane’s as a business owner, mine as a PA/secretary whose career was in the same industry as Diane’s and really not worlds apart.

Firstly, Diane outlined how she felt there was an increase in the commoditisation of legal services. She believed the profession was becoming more triangular in that specific reserved work was at the top of the triangle. Below was the work of importance but not threatening to the survival of the firm which was quasi-reserved. Then, you had repetitive or commodity work which was not reserved at the bottom. In this area of work, there were other individuals, companies and organisations coming into the market, trying to take away a piece of the lawyers’ shrinking pie. Will writers for example were competing with probate practitioners on price.

Conversely, the higher the work moved from repetitive commodity to strategic, the more willing clients were to pay more money. However, the more the work moved from strategic to commodity, the volume of cases increased and clients were not willing to pay as much. There may be trouble ahead…!

Diane had already made the decision on whether AD continued to practice the commodity type work it had been practising

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