 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Who are our Candidates? Our lawyers and paralegals are exceptional, motivated and hard-working experienced professionals, from many different practice areas, who want fulfillment in their personal lives as well as in their careers. They have chosen to work with us because they know that we offer them the opportunity to work at top-quality firms and organisations on a contract or temporary basis. They will work hard for a client, take a break to pursue their own thing (be it a hobby, an extended holiday, writing a novel, running a business or simply enjoying time with their loved ones), and then begin work again on another assignment - each time bringing their ever-developing legal and practical skills with them. Our lawyers come from a range of quality backgrounds - they are lawyers with first rate private practice or in-house experience obtained in leading organisations in the City or abroad and are either in transition, want to work more sensibly, or want greater variety in the work that they do. They are all individuals who understand the way in which businesses such as yours work and succeed and are committed to doing whatever it takes to achieve the excellent results that you and your clients expect. You do not employ our lawyers or paralegals. Instead, they are our employees and we have a contractual relationship with you - meaning that you do not have to concern yourselves with PAYE, NICs, and other employee-related issues. You can hire lawyers and paralegals through us for as short or as long a time as you want, perhaps converting successful temporary arrangements into permanent hires. Each of our candidates has been carefully interviewed and assessed by a former practising City lawyer who is experienced with organisations such as yours and who understands the importance of quality legal practitioners. Our candidates' credentials are rigorously checked and references taken up. Our candidates are people whom we believe you would have considered for permanent employment - were it not for the fact that these individuals want to work more flexibly. We are creating a whole new market in the UK in terms of supplying only quality professionals with appropriate experience. We understand that they will usually have to fit quickly and effectively into your organisation and culture. Typically you will want them to form a seamless part of your team. We work hard to assess this "cultural fit" in proposing individuals to you for consideration. We will provide you with the details of individuals whom we consider to be potentially suitable but whether or not you take on any or all of those people is entirely up to you. You will, of course, be at liberty to interview as many or as few of our suggested candidates as you wish in order to help reach this decision. The rates which we charge for our candidates allow you to keep your costs down while enabling us to attract quality. Specific rates obviously differ according to particular candidates and their levels of experience and we would be delighted to discuss these with you as appropriate. At the end of each week, each individual will have his or her time-sheet signed by an appropriate supervisor at your offices. This information will be directly translated onto our records and we will bill you fortnightly for the time incurred - we pay our candidates fortnightly so we do request that you please pay promptly. We are acutely aware of your concern relating to the risk of conflicts of interest arising and, prior to any assignment, will assist you in screening for potential conflicts. Naturally we require that all our candidates inform us immediately they become aware of an actual or potential conflict of interest. Further, we will ensure that wherever a conflict, or a risk of a conflict, arises as a result of one of our candidates being placed with you, we will discuss the situation with you and, if either of us so requests, the candidate in question will be suspended and/or the particular assignment terminated. In such a situation we will of course try hard to find you a replacement. With regard to confidentiality, our agreement with our candidates requires that they keep confidential all information to which they have access in each placement that we make for them. If you would like your own direct confidentiality agreement with our candidates, this can easily be arranged. PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE We cannot hold professional indemnity insurance in respect of our candidates because we do not practise law. However, because the candidates will be under your direct control and supervision, the terms of your own PI cover should ordinarily cover any unanticipated negligence on their part. Please do check this and alert us if for some reason your policy does not offer this cover. CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Each of our lawyers is responsible for his or her own continuing professional development and we require them to warrant that they have done and will continue to do this. We assist our lawyers in this respect by giving them details of useful courses and seminars through which they can achieve and maintain high quality continuing professional development. We have established a relationship with an online CPD provider through which our candidates can access high quality legal development programmes at a specially reduced rate. We want to enjoy long-term relationships with both our clients and our candidates. We want to know whether we are meeting your needs and confirm that our candidates are fitting in well. To this end, we will often ask for a little of your time in giving us feedback as to the performance of our candidates during their assignments. We undertake a similar post-assignment review with the candidates themselves. Together, these exercises help us to achieve our aim of providing you with an excellent ongoing service. INTERIM SENIOR COUNSEL ON DEMAND If you or one of your clients needs the assistance of experienced and highly skilled lawyers to manage a project, act as an interim general counsel, build up a new legal team or practice group, or provide specific industry experience, please go to Interim Senior Counsel on Demand.
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
