It has been a gruelling summer. At a time when the better (?) weather and holiday season should throw up a more relaxed, sunny outlook, we have been under the lash. Or I have. When holidays in a small firm start, everyone has to do a bit of doubling up. In my case, as soon as the doubling up started, it was tripling up, and for a few days quadrupling up (think of Charlton Heston in Ben Hur when all the horses are running like f*** and he is trying to hang on to them as they career to the equine equivalent of several dozen dates of entry) due to staff illness and bad luck. And then… the computers crashed. We are a network of 4 offices and remote workers all on the one system. We can key in from anywhere so are used to hot-desking and home-working, but then the actual link goes down, most of us can do absolutely nothing, 3 weeks it went on for, with IT folk blaming telecoms folk, and me in the middle, sinking. Even on my wife’s 50th birthday I was two hours late for the dinner party as I had to wait in the office with engineers trying to get us back up and running. We are now fixed and somewhat reconfigured, but I am several decades older.

When my own holiday came, it was a blessed relief – but by that time I had been diagnosed with stress-induced jaw strain – clenching my teeth in fear, anguish, frustration and anger so often the jaw had seized up. Various pills and a mouthguard later, my head does not hurt nearly as much as it did. And for two weeks now the computers have been more or less behaving.

Funnily enough, on holiday my friend who runs a legal practice in Wales, and who comes to the same hotel as us every year, had been experiencing the same kind of problems we had, so much mutual moaning ensued over the Sangria.

I regard the months of the year following my summer holiday as being part II of the year, even if the halves are thus not equal. This is the time that I begin to put schemes and development plans into operation. The staff never like this, as change is anathema to workers of all sorts – witness the titanic struggles of BA and the Post Office when new working practices are proposed. Not that I will be doing anything drastic, but one thing I have learned in business is that standing still means a slow death. The lawyer-as-shark metaphor is terminally clichéd, but the need to keep moving forward is apposite.

Indeed, even the IT stramash had its benefits. I now know considerably more about our computers and how they link up, and am thus more adept at local fixing instead of waiting for an engineer callout, I can talk to the engineers on the phone with a less clueless tone than hitherto. And I know what kind of system I want next time.

The overload from holidays and illness was equally instructive. We are a reasonably efficient and careful firm, but I can see many ways in which we could save money, time, risk and effort in working ever smarter. As you are shovelling conveyancing at speed, you get to see what works, and what is a drain on time and resources. I have over the years developed an office manual of procedures and techniques, designed for those purposes. Some rules in it are basic and universal (remember to get a phone number for anyone who calls in, in case we get cut off or have to phone them back), some have changed over time – the one that says if you fax a letter to another solicitor , don’t also post it unless you have to, has become: if you email another solicitor, don’t fax and/or post unless you have to. Some are very esoteric, and some have to be rewritten in increasingly strident terms as certain staff ignoring what seems to me an obvious process becomes exponentially irksome.

I think solicitors are worse than most other trades when it comes to innovation. My innovation is essentially reactive. It’s only once something feels too expensive, too slow or too risky that I look around at ways to renew a process or some kit. I know lots and lots of lawyers who just want to keep on doing things the same as it is comfortable and familiar, whilst around them the unseen tide creeps up to their doorstep.

But there are firms – mainly some middle-sized to larger firms, in which systems and processes and the whole delivery of service have been thought out and applied in a thoroughly commercial way. I won’t embarrass my friends in Glasgow and Fife by mentioning them, but I aspire. Having been a lawyer for 30 years nearly, and sole practitioner and senior partner for long enough, I am now more interested in the process than the substance. How can I build a better mousetrap? I can no longer taste the cheese. How can we reduce the overheads and increase the profits? How (more importantly) can I become moderately rich, and … retire?

So maybe I am like the Pope (at this point I must share with you that a beloved relative of mine was at lunch with the rest of us and we were talking about the forthcoming papal visit and huge open-air Mass. I won’t be going, she says, and then I thought she said because I don’t like Krauts. When I began to splutter that having a German Pope is not any better or worse that any other nationality and racism is not my thing, she looked back blankly. I said I don’t like… crowds.) , able to preach perfection from on high but prepared to forgive again and again.

Whatever is done must be done with a good grace. I realise that being an employer is different from being a friend, but I try to avoid the shouting and vein-throbbing redness in the neck approach to management. The carrot is better than the stick, and as one of my more wisdom-imbued though linguistically coorse clients says “ Ye get mair wi’ sugar than ye dae wi’ shit.”

Part of me though just doesn’t get it. Why would folk do things in a way that gives them themselves more work to do instead of a) making life easier, b) giving clients and employers a better service, and c) making me happier? Thankfully it’s not too often I have to heave that particular psychological cupboard closed before the evil monkey that lives in it gets me, but it is never locked or nailed shut.

In some ways it would be nice if instead of employees I were to have a bank of computers that simply needed to be programmed and left to get on with it. Apart from the odd new print cartridge and an annual PAT test, no angst, no risk and no bother. However, the law is not like that, and even the most sophisticated case management system cannot cope with the nutter, the odd wee plot of land in Lanarkshire that you’re buying or the ranking agreement among 3 banks and a trust. And in spite of the great work of the Property Standardisation Group and the fine body of men and women who have put together the Combined Standard Clauses for missives, legal practice cannot be canned or homogenised. Your conveyancing Tropicana is always the one with Bits in it. And that’s why you need real people to work for you and for the clients.

So while I wear a business owner hat, and an employer feather in it, and would wistfully look for a uniform and standard way of working to minimise the outgoings and maximise profit, the reality is that what you lose on the swings, you gain on the member of staff who patiently and loyally talks an angry client down from their high horse, the colleague who knows that whilst this lender puts a great big sentence on the loan papers saying they will require 5 clear working days before they end the mortgage funds, the reality is they will actually do it overnight if asked nicely, and the person who makes the little suggestion to the client that is not in the systems instructions but will save them thousands in costs of one sort or another. Soft law, not black in the letters.

So ok, not everyone in the office is hot on the IT. I shall keep on going at the training and the explaining, but as long as I have the kind of professional, dedicated, motivated folk I currently employ – and Jesus be praised, they can all spell perfectly! – I will see the HR cup as more than half full.

As long as my jaw is not aching, we’re fine.

Austin