Home working for lawyers – we are hiring
Here at Bonallack & Bishop we are always interested to hear from quality lawyers who want to work remotely. Whether you’re a solicitor, a legal executive or experienced paralegal, we have opportunities for you to work from home. And, depending on the position, we are always happy to look at flexible hours and part-time – in fact, whatever suits you best. As far as we can, we try to fit jobs around people. We firmly believe that happy lawyers make good lawyers
Currently 4 out of our last 5 hires of fee earners have been for remote lawyers. And in fact, the head of our residential conveyancing and lease extension teams (and a salaried partner to boot) is a remote worker himself. And it’s working really well.
Home working is nothing new for our lawyers
Working from home is nothing new for us. Our senior partner, Tim Bishop has been doing it himself for around 10 years – and encouraging many of our staff to do so as well.
And that’s why when Covid lockdown first hit in March 2020, within 2 hours, 80% of our lawyers were ready to work from home – with a phone system, laptop, case management and remote access all lined up. And we can do this simply because we have been allowing, and often encouraging our lawyers, where appropriate, to work from home for the last 10 years.
We firmly believe that Covid has simply accelerated the take-up of technology – particularly the likes of Zoom and Microsoft Teams. And it’s clear that an increasing number of our clients take the same view. A quick statistical analysis of our clients in July 2022 shows that, although we are at heart a local High Street law firm (with 4 offices in Wiltshire and Hampshire), a full 56% of our clients are not local. And if our clients aren’t local – then our lawyers don’t need to be either.
Solid remote working experience required
Let’s face it, working from home fully doesn’t suit everyone. Some take to it like a duck to water but others hate it with a vengeance. So we are only interested in talking to lawyers who want to work from home if they already have solid, enjoyable and rewarding experience of remote working.
The difference between fee earning work and support work
Many of our lawyers are now hybrid or remote workers. We have proved we can make it work really well. But we are not a purely remote law firm. So all of our support staff work from the office.
Will I ever visit the office?
That’s really up to you and your particular circumstances. Over the years we’ve worked hard on onboarding process and in ideal world, even if you are going to work from home on a permanent basis, we encourage all new remote lawyers to spend the 1st couple of days with us in the office – to meet colleagues and go through systems and training face-to-face – and we will put you up in a local hotel to facilitate that.
But, depending where you live and on your circumstances, this is not essential.
NB if you do live reasonably near to 1 of our 4 branch offices in Salisbury, Andover, Amesbury and Fordingbridge, we are also more than happy to consider you for a hybrid working role.
Remote working need not be lonely – work as part of the team
One real risk when working from home full time is feeling isolated and on your own. While there is no doubt that working from home is not the same as being office based, we’ve proved over the last few years that home working does not need to be a lonely existence. All of our teams work closely together – and internally, we use Microsoft teams for regular internal meetings.
Current remote lawyer jobs?
Please click here to visit our main Legal Jobs page for all our current vacancies, including remote working job opportunities.
Interested being in becoming another of our remote lawyers?
Simply drop an email to Senior Partner, Tim Bishop, using the email contact form below – and include your CV and an accompanying letter