Not all legal jobs need a lawyer

From gas servicing injunctions to debt collection and statements in anti-social behaviour cases, many routine tasks are often undertaken by higher paid in-house legal staff or expensively contracted out. Yet with basic training, most administrators could draft the documents required, while other managers or supervisors undertake any court appearances.

My experience of training social landlord staff for gas servicing injunctions, for example, enabled the administrator to draft the applications and a works supervisor to do the advocacy. It was vastly cheaper and highly motivating to the works department to try to gain access through consent.
A second frequent mistake comes from the law of unintended consequences - or company policies that end up generating litigation.

‘It’s the principle of the thing’ says my social landlord client. My response is ‘Principles cost money: how much are you prepared to pay?’ Pursuing cases out of principle regardless of cost and whether judgement can be enforced is a luxury social landlords can no longer afford. So while the current trend to contract out legal services has merit when cases require specialist input, far too much basic work which does not need a lawyer is packaged up with it.

The real question managers should ask when commissioning legal services is not how much can we contract out, but how much can we give to non-lawyers?

Emily Gasson, Affordable Action Solicitors