Connecting clients

Welcome to the future. Hope everyone’s on track with the transporting hubs, wearable wellbeing tech and flying vehicle airspace car park permits. Or for those more pessimistic, have you got your staff radioactive suits upgraded, air filtration systems running and fully functioning on-prem gardens tended?

There’s a lot to absorb as 2020 gets underway, and I’m not just talking about failed future views. Whether it’s a fourth quarter rush or first quarter charge, setting things in motion for the year, SME law firms will all be focusing on one thing: clients. To kickstart the year, staff writer Jem Sandhu investigates how – and how well – SME law firms engage with their clients (p14).

HAPPY CLIENTS

What’s your clients’ experience of your law firm? The answer used to be largely limited to actual transactions done for a client: ensuring that the firm stayed on clients’ radar for possible future business. But clients increasingly expect more from their law firms. Jem Sandhu reports.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Matt Meyer says he comes from a family that’s deeply imbedded in the air force, and grew up on military airfields – so flying is in his blood. Having had an RAF scholarship and before going into law, he explains that flying has always captured his imagination and can offer some transferable lessons for legal.

TAXING NEW RULES

The first year of Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT ends in April 2020. Tim Smith at Insight Legal explains that VAT-registered firms have been required to install software to record VAT transactions and submit the data to the HMRC, but firms without a compliant legal accounts package can still meet requirements.

TRACKING SUCCESS

One main obstacle to business growth is the complexity of processes and IT systems necessary to function. Ensuring uniformity across geographically separate offices at Parker Bullen was the task given to Julian Ganley – hired in 2016 to untangle the firm’s tech, who chose InfoTrack to integrate into the future.