Professional Development

A recent case in Manchester has highlighted the importance of paying attention to detail when it comes to conveyancing. An assistant solicitor has been fined £5,000 after forgetting to register a Notice of Interest in a property. His oversight was much dearer, however, for his client. As a result of the mistake, an investor didn’t receive £40,400 due when the property was sold! 

Losing the Plot

This recent oversight made headlines in legal publications for obvious reasons. It has brought up the fact that too many conveyancers in the UK are making simple errors, which end up both inconveniencing and costing their clients. 

You’ve likely heard the expression ‘act of God’, usually in reference to insurance claims. But what’s the difference between it and force majeure, and under what circumstances does either apply? 

Acts of God

Acts of God are usually referred to with regard to insurance and typically include natural phenomena such as floods, lightning strikes, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. Any large-scale, freak weather occurrence falls under this category.

Last month, we looked at the etiquette involved in accompanying your boss to court. This month, we’ll have a look at what happens when you get there, what you can expect to happen and how you can help. 

Whether you’re attending court on a criminal or a civil case, one of the first things that will happen when you arrive is that your boss will have a conference with the client. In this article, however, I’m going to concentrate on what happens in civil cases, including family cases.

Keep the focus on the client

“I need you to come down to court with me tomorrow.” When you hear these words from your boss, do you feel pleasant anticipation or hear the knell of doom? Although accompanying your boss or another member of the firm to court can be one of the most interesting aspects of your job, many secretaries don’t make the most of the experience because they are not sure what’s required of them, either in terms of general etiquette or in terms of the tasks they are being asked to do. Here’s a quick introductory guide to both.

The most important thing is to get clear in your own mind what your boss wants you to do. Very often s/he will ask you to come down to court purely so that you can observe the process, and see how what you are doing on a day-to-day basis is used out there in the wide world. 

Remember that you are the public face of the firm

Every firm has them. The clients whom we politely call “demanding”. The clients who ring up and must speak to your boss right now about their latest difficulty; the clients who turn up at reception shouting the odds; the clients who angrily dispute their bills with you and claim that your boss didn’t actually do the work; the clients who threaten to – and frequently do – take their grievances to the Legal Ombudsman, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the press. 

Do you know what your boss thinks about your performance at work?

Some readers will be able to answer “yes” to this question without much thought because they go through evaluations at least once a year, and those evaluations are built into their work calendars. These meetings are a great opportunity not only to get feedback from their bosses, but also to give feedback about how their own job is working out for them – and to consider that all-important question of salary. 

Be self-reliant when proofreading your documents

“Halo, I’m sorry to trouble you, I know your busty, but you sued us recently for some tiepin work and I wandered if you wood car to rate our services on a scale of wan to ten. …”

Recognise those who supported you by supporting your junior colleagues

Procrastination, the habit of putting tasks off to the last possible minute, can be a major problem in both your career and your personal life. Side effects include missed opportunities, frenzied work hours, stress, overwhelmedness, resentment and guilt. This article will explore the root causes of procrastination and give you several practical tools for overcoming it.

The behaviour pattern of procrastination can be triggered in many different ways, so you won’t always procrastinate for the same reason. Sometimes you’ll procrastinate because you’re overwhelmed with too much on your plate, and procrastination gives you an escape. Other times you’ll feel tired and lazy, and you just can’t get going.

Let’s now address these various causes of procrastination and consider intelligent ways to respond.

1. Stress

A New App Aims to Make You Less Apologetic

Here’s an interesting game to play if you monitor your boss’s emails. How many of the incoming emails start off by apologising (“I’m sorry to bother you, but ...”) or by minimising the subject (“I just need a quick word with you about ...”)? And of those, how many have been written by women? I’ll say this next bit in a whisper: are you even a bit guilty of doing this yourself?

The thinking behind Just Not Sorry, a new app for Gmail, is that women in particular (though not just women!) are prone to sabotaging the content of their emails by using certain words. The app works by highlighting the “weasel words” in your emails and giving you the opportunity to substitute them with something less, well, apologetic.