Manchester Law Society would like to wish you all a happy and healthy new year!
After 25+ years of publishing The Messenger (and many other publications) the superlative Julia Baskerville has retired. We thank her for all she has done for the Society, making The Messenger such a must read publication for our community and wish her a long and happy retirement.
We are delighted to be working with East Park Communications as our new pubishers. Please read all about them below.
Don't forget to submit your articles for the next edition of The Messenger by 14th January. You can submit your articles here.
We are also very busy planning lots of exciting things for 2022 including online and (hopefully) in person events. Keep your eyes peeled for more details on those over the next few weeks.
I am delighted to have been chosen as the new publisher for the Messenger. I’m greatly looking forward to working with the committee and members to continue the great work that Julia Baskerville has done and realise that I have big boots to fill!
I have been running my Publishing company, East Park Communications since 2007 and our main clients have been Provincial Law Societies, although we have occasionally produced journals for the Reserve Forces, Medical providers and local events.
While we are based in Birkenhead, our Local Law Society clients are located mainly in the Midlands and South East, including all the East Anglian Societies plus three from the East Midlands.
Prior to setting up East Park Communications, I spent seven years at Graduate Prospects, a graduate recruitment publisher based at Manchester University, with offices just off Oxford Road. Initially I worked on their portfolio of online and printed magazines for general graduate recruitment opportunities and was eventually put in charge of sales for their Legal Directory. This featured contracts and pupillages for second year Law Students and final year non-Law Students. This ignited my interest in the legal market, leading me to making a career in that sector.
Having previously lived in Sale for seven years, I occasionally I travel to Heywood Road to see their Rugby Club. I am very familiar with Manchester and looking forward to returning for meetings and your awards dinner. I now live on the Wirral, have been married for 20 Years and have one son who is at university.
As we are taking over the whole range of e-magazines originated by Julia, we have set up a sister company to East Park Communications which is known as Baskerville eMedia, to ensure continuity with clients, advertisers and branding. The service Julia provided will be maintained with monthly Flickread and PDF downloads, which differ from the quarterly printed magazines we publish for our provincial Law Society clients.
I wish everyone involved with Manchester Law Society a happy New year on behalf of my team and we look forward to building on Julia’s success with The Messenger.
Running a client account is fraught with risk, and it comes at a cost. Security breaches, fraudulent activity, administrative burden, regulatory pressures and reporting, accounting requirements, training and software needs … the list goes on. Law firms face challenges thrown at them from all angles to be able to run this service. While some are insignificant, yet time-consuming, others can be serious and, at times, destructive.
It is clear why managing client accounts is common practice for law firms; lawyers centre their work on satisfying their clients and they take on a level of risk to meet their needs. Client accounts can be a helpful resource and tool to support a client, while also, importantly, a requirement to offer certain legal services.
This logic, however, is contradictory. The management of a client account can be detrimental to their service. While the challenges listed above are mostly internal and directly impact the law firm itself, there are also adverse consequences for the client.
The costs of running the account, including the accounting, regulatory reporting, and insurance contributions, are ultimately wrapped up in the fees firms charge. While compensation funds can cover costs related to instances of fraud or cyber-attacks, in some cases they cannot, and these crimes can be disastrous for a client’s personal security. Critically, the same impacts could be realised by human error from the law firm running the account – a risk exacerbated by the innate fact that lawyers are not trained to manage finances.
With this in mind, clients can become wary of their client account, and in turn their law firm. Lawyers spend unbillable hours making payments and managing client expectations, responding to inquiries about the funds. Lawyers are in a lose-lose predicament, choosing between building trust and, by nature, loyalty or being money-focused.
For the above reasons, increasing numbers of law firms are choosing an alternative. One that enables speed (reducing cost), offers transparency (building trust), and enhances security (reducing risk). Using a Third-Party Managed Account (TPMA) works in favour of both the firm and the client. Firms gain back time from less administrative and regulatory burden and clients have peace of mind that their funds are secure.
To learn more about Shieldpay’s TPMA solution, contact Ian Gilroy at igilroy@shieldpay.com
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