Bell Lamb and Joynson Solicitors is celebrating its most prolific business year on record in its almost 200-year-old history.
The North West legal firm, established in 1821, has seen out its latest business year with a total of 16 new recruits, a duo of award wins and significant growth in turnover of 28% across all departments.
Managing Partner Mike Leeman credits the company’s digital approach for contributing to recent achievements, with the ability to streamline processes for both staff and clients improving the quality of services across its branches in Liverpool, Runcorn and Warrington.
Mike said: “We recently came to the end of our business year and reflecting on our success in the past 12 months is incredibly rewarding and a real testament to the work of the entire team across all of our departments. In 2018, we set ourselves quite ambitious targets in terms of company growth and we’re pleased to say that we have exceeded those significantly.
“In 2016, we began to digitalise the business, investing heavily into new systems that would aid communication both internally and client facing and it’s now that we are starting to see the financial benefits from this strategic operational change. Our conveyancing and criminal departments are among our best performing areas, up by 55% and 26% respectively in terms of the volume of cases. We’re pleased to say that we’re bucking industry trends and we hope to see other firms follow suit by adopting a more modern and tech-savvy approach to legal services.”
Following its annual growth, the firm has increased its staffing by 47% over the last 12 months with further hires in place for the coming months that will bring the team up to 52 employees by 2020.
Mike added: “With such a monumental increase in our workforce in a relatively short space of time, we’ve had to adapt some of our processes to ensure that communication is efficient and client relationships remain at the forefront. Having recently invested in a number of online communications tools and case management systems we can offer prompt 24-hour updates online and through our recently launched app. We’re pleased to offer our clients such a pioneering service which was recently recognised in the national Eclipse Proclaim Modern Law Conveyancing Awards where we picked up the accolade for ‘Customer Care’. This year we were also awarded the Criminal Law Award at the Liverpool Law Society’s Legal Awards, which was a great achievement for the team.
“BLJ Solicitors is keen to support the industry as a whole and lead by example so it has been an honour to be invited to speak at a number of national events this year to discuss the use of technology within the legal sector and the importance of price transparency, which is something that we have offered for a number of years. We hope to see this momentum continue and look forward to what the next 12 months has in store for the sector, which we believe will be heavily shaped by the introduction of technology across more law firms locally and regionally.”
