Practical Tools for Day-to-Day
Management of a Law Practice
The Law Society of Singapore’s Practice Management Committee organised a risk management workshop on Saturday, 15 November 2003 at the Amara Hotel,
Singapore, with the kind sponsorship of Alexander Forbes (Singapore) Pte Ltd. The workshop was presented by Ms Jane LeMessurier and Ms Sue Harrington of LeMessurier Harrington
Consulting of Australia.
The workshop was aimed at assisting law practices provide better and safer service so as to increase work satisfaction and profit while reducing complaints and claims. It appears to be a
universal problem in the legal profession that poor service delivery and failure in administration, rather than a lack of legal
knowledge, form the basis of most complaints against lawyers.
About 100 enthusiastic lawyers and support staff attended this well-received half-day workshop. Participants were divided into
two groups of about 50 persons each. The topics covered at the workshop were ‘Delegation and Supervision’ and ‘File and
Time Management’.
Presenters
Both Ms LeMessurier and Ms Harrington were former solicitorsin private practice in Australia, before joining the South
Australian Professional Indemnity Insurance Scheme where they worked for more than 10 years. They formed their consulting
business in October 2001 and their business focuses on the development and presentation of relevant risk management
education programmes for legal and other professions.
For this workshop, Ms LeMessurier covered the topics relating to delegation and supervision while Ms Harrington covered
the topics relating to time and file management. Local statistics and information were provided to the presenters by Alexander
Forbes and the Practice Management Committee.
Delegation and Supervision
Rule 8 of the Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules requires an advocate and solicitor to exercise proper supervision
over his employees and other staff.
This is a simple yet often overlooked rule. Shortly after commencing her presentation, Ms LeMessurier played a video
for the attendees. In the scene, ‘John, the partner of the firm, becomes aware of a complaint from a client relating to work
done by Tom who is on leave. John seeks to reassign the file to a senior solicitor, Louise, who is reluctant to take it on’. Amid
smiles from the attendees, the scene showed that ‘Tom does not record attendance notes regularly and does not manage
his files properly. He has in the past delegated his files to Louise who obviously got frustrated over time not just because of Tom’s
messy files but also because her work load increases without a corresponding increase in support for her’. Sound familiar?
Some of the lessons learnt are that:
• John was not aware of the delegation of work between his employees;
• John did not adequately supervise his employees; and
• John was not aware of the workloads of his employees.
Result? Frustrated employees and angry clients. Risk? Staff turnover, negligence, law suits.
Ms LeMessurier conducted her presentation with notes, examples, video scenes and also with participation from the
attendees to reiterate that firms are dependent on teamwork and that practitioners need to know not only the law but also
to understand the importance of running an efficient, equitable and energetic practice to achieve development and profitability
of their law practices. The key factors to proper delegation and supervision require:
• co-operation, knowledge and information sharing;
• teamwork; and
• synergy.
The importance of having proper supervision and effective
delegation cannot be overstated. The result obviously will be
the provision of good legal service, which means committed
employees and satisfied clients.
Time and File Management
The Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules impose a
professional obligation on solicitors to:
• complete work within a reasonable time (r 14);
• refuse work if your workload means you will not be able to attend to the client’s matter ‘diligently and expeditiously’(r 15);
• keep the client informed (r 17); and
• respond to the client’s calls and keep appointments with them (r 20).
Under the compulsory Professional Indemnity Scheme:
• nearly one in every five notifications of claims relate to ‘time’ problems; and
• over the past 13 years of the Scheme, one fifth of claims payment are attributable to ‘time’ related matters.
Ms Harrington brought the attendees through policies, systems and procedures to impress upon them the benefits
of good risk management. Why the need for good risk management? The reasons are that the effects of a
claim/complaint could lead to:
• a rise in insurance premium;
• liability to pay an excess;
• loss of time through disruption, resulting in loss of fees;
• solicitor’s reputation may be damaged;
• emotional stress; and
• adverse publicity for the profession.
Having a system in place is one thing but following it is another.
Ms Harrington suggested that common reasons why systems
fail could be due to:
• lack of commitment by everyone in the office;
• staff not being involved in the development of the systems;
• failure to enforce and reinforce the need to comply with the systems at all times;
• failure to ensure that all staff are educated appropriately in the use of the systems;
• failure to ensure that established systems do not deteriorate; and
• failure to recognise that the use of a system is a managerial responsibility rather than a legal responsibility.
Once again, the importance of reviewing one’s time management systems and procedures cannot be overstated.
The statistics tell a tale and if the lesson is missed, the effects
would be unpleasant.
Ganesh S Ramanathan
Practice Management Committee
The Law Society of Singapore