What did we get right in 2015?

It's the start of the year: an opportunity to reflect on what we have done right and, possibly, a chance to chew the cud on the mistakes which have been made.

At a recent partners' meeting, we asked ourselves the question: how do we make the staff happy? Obviously, having a motivated, happy team of people around you is important not just for the partners but also for the clients.

Sure, high salaries always cheer up the team. But I'm a smallish high-street practice and I am never going to be able to match the megabucks paid by the magic and silver circle firms.

Bearing in mind how long we all spend in the office, what we are actually doing matters a great deal. Are we on the side of the angels or are we just doing a job for a high fee?

My firm is a little unusual in that we do a large volume of both private client and legal aid work. Sometimes we have a homeless Somali man seeking advice on his housing predicament seated in reception next to a lord and lady getting advice on their wills.

We help with domestic violence injunctions, homelessness, and care cases. We endeavour to protect those threatened with possession proceedings. The team go away at night knowing that they may have been instrumental in housing a homeless person, or saving a battered wife from yet more violence, or keeping a tenant in the home that they have lived in for 40 years.

My team care for the clients and they work tirelessly to achieve the correct results, often against all the odds. Sometimes, this can be thankless work, but we do it regardless. We all know that what we are doing is extremely important, and despite the challenges that the legal aid system can throw at us (and there are many challenges, believe me), we carry on. The team can look at themselves in the mirror every night and know that they are on the side of
the angels.

We decided at our partners' meeting that this was, on balance, probably more important than high salaries. While some firms boast about pro bono, we do this stuff every hour of the day, every day of the week. It's green, it's satisfying, and it does make
for a happy team.

Russell Conway is senior partner at Oliver Fisher @Russboy11 www.oliverfisher.co.uk

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