CPM21 are delighted to announce that they have been approved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to deliver the compulsory Management Stage 1 Course. This is a mandatory course for all solicitors in their third year of practice. The first course is scheduled to take place on the 24th of September 2008 in Cardiff.

Wayne Williams becomes a Law Society approved regional CLACS Consultant for the Cardiff area

CPM21 welcomes Gary Barker in joining the team as an Associate Advisor - for more about Gary see him in our Personnel Profiles.

Janette Hill and Co attain the Lexcel V4 Quality Mark

Janette Hill & Co is a niche Personal Injury practice which deals exclusively with personal injury claims on behalf of people who have been injured through no fault of their own.

As part of their 2007 to 2008 business plan, the Practice decided to consolidate its excellent quality procedures and its commitment to continually improving services by attaining the version 4 Law Society Lexcel Quality Mark.

To help them with this, they asked for expert advice from Paul Jones of CPM21.

Janette Hill, Senior Partner with the firm comments that

“Paul’s initial evaluation of the Practice against the Lexcel standard criteria was really useful. It did two things for us, firstly it gave us extra confidence that we were already providing a good quality, valued service to our clients, and secondly it helped identify areas that could be further improved.”

After the evaluation, Paul and Janette worked on an action plan to work on improvement areas, which involved the rest of the practice, at a pace to suit the practice.

In March 2008, the Practice was audited against the standard, and recommended for accreditation, which it has now received. The auditor had this to say;

“This highly satisfactory assessment identified areas of good practice against all eight Lexcel V4 sectional requirements. File management and review activities were considered to be of a particularly high standard. A thorough understanding of Lexcel standard requirements was evident in discussions with all fee earners and support staff sampled during the course of this initial assessment.”

A delighted Janette had this to say,

“I am pleased that my firm has become one of the very first to obtain a recommendation for Lexcel Certification against the new version 4 of the scheme. This would not have been possible without the assistance of Paul Jones who, since his appointment in June 2007 has worked tirelessly with my team to prepare for the 2 day assessment.

The auditor identified a maximum of 8 areas of good practice, a first for him! We had no non compliance issues at all. This would not have been possible without Paul’s expertise, knowledge and dedication to preparing for the audit in a professional manner geared directly to the needs of my specialist practice. I very strongly recommend Paul to your firm if you are considering moving forward to reach the Lexcel Standard of Accreditation with the Law Society.”