Our joint Heads of Chambers, Angus Moon KC and Michael Horne KC, foster a Chambers culture of ideas and initiative. Chambers & Partners has complimented us on our “modernising fervour“ and we have set out to create the environment of “openness to change and continuous improvement” identified in the recent Financial Times’ Innovative Lawyers Report as being crucial to “real industry transformation.”
A bold move to new purpose-designed premises on a single floor of the iconic Reuters Building in Fleet Street has had a major impact, dramatically improving communication and cohesion. Desk-sharing and hot-desking arrangements, together with the efficient use of IT, operate to reduce cost to the individual barristers (and so to clients) and to increase their ability to work flexibly according to personal preference and responsibilities. The largely open-plan layout lends itself to an informal, on-going dialogue, which assists barristers and staff alike and has clear benefits to clients in terms of both our work and our service.
We have comprehensive internal training programmes for both barristers and staff and our Chambers intranet is one means by which we facilitate knowledge-sharing within the set.
Our investment in a Senior Management Team means that we have the insight and resource to work with clients to assess and develop the service we provide. We conduct regular service reviews with individual clients – at such intervals as they prefer – in order to identify their particular needs and to ensure that we continue to meet their requirements.
We have included a facility to leave feedback on each individual barrister and staff profile on this website: we hope in this way to make it simple and quick for professional and lay clients to comment. We’d always be interested to hear your views, whether positive or negative.
We also monitor our performance rigorously via client feedback questionnaires sent out at the conclusion of each matter. The completed forms are circulated to the relevant barrister(s) and reviewed at weekly staff meetings. The results are overwhelmingly positive but we act quickly in respect of any suggestions received.
More generally, we have undertaken two client surveys in the last two and a half years and reviewed the findings in a series of Chambers workshops to agree a range of concrete, practical measures to be introduced as a result. This is an exercise we intend to repeat at regular intervals.
Please contact our Chief Executive, Catherine Calder, if you have any comments or suggestions: your feedback will be invaluable in terms of helping us to develop and tailor the service we provide.