Guess what? Christmas falls on December 25th this year.

This isn’t my line, but Martin Lewis’s – he of “Money Saving Expert” fame. His point in a nutshell is that although we all know on the 1st of January each year exactly when Christmas will fall, we tend to make little or no financial preparation for it, with the result that many of us binge spend and then have to pay for Christmas at least until the following Easter.

What holds true for our finances can also be true of our working and private lives at Christmas. Somehow, as that immovable deadline of 25 December looms ever larger, there just seems to be more to do at work and at home. And worse still, it all must be done by Christmas Eve.

ILSPA is working with Prodigy Learning to offer its Members, Students and applicants the chance to become a certified Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS).

As law offices become more reliant on technology, it has never been more important for their staff to be confident and competent using common software such as Microsoft Office.

Emma Stacey (CEO, ILSPA) said, “It is essential for Legal Secretaries and PAs to have good Microsoft Office skills in order to perform their work accurately and efficiently. We are very pleased to be offering Microsoft Office through Prodigy Learning to enable people to gain employment or advance their skills in the workplace”.

If you took any employee to one side and asked them whether or not they believe they truly give 100% to their work, I wonder if they would answer affirmatively. Let’s try to delve into the inner depths of our beings here and evaluate just how committed you really are to your work.

Job Satisfaction

One of the most pertinent factors to dictate whether you really feel you are giving your job 100% boils down to your level of job satisfaction. If you jump out of bed in the morning with a spring in your step at the very prospect of going to work, this is excellent, and you are probably putting your all into what you do. However, if there are negative thoughts and issues getting in the way of the enjoyment of your work, you are likely to find that the figure you are putting into your job will be closer to the 50% mark or perhaps even lower.

Can you believe that although we are well into the twenty-first century now, we find ourselves still considering an abhorrence of mankind that should have been eliminated back in the nineteenth century? Alas, it would appear that our species is always ready to prove its monstrous side in some way or other, and this is entirely why Theresa May (Home Secretary) and several other members of the House of Commons believed that modern slavery legislation was called for.

The main purpose of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 is to criminalise any forms of human trafficking and modern slavery and to criminalise the transportation of an individual with the intention of exploiting them. The Act’s definition of slavery includes premature or arranged marriage, forced labour or the exploitation of child labour.

Here is a selection of vacancies from our Legal Secretary Jobs Board this month:

Float and Evening Secretary – The Khan Partnership

Location: Camden Town, London

Salary: £30,000 plus

Closing Date: 20/11/15

The Khan Partnership are seeking to recruit a professional, proactive, vibrant, highly experienced and motivated Float Secretary to provide extensive support to their Senior Partner, Partners and Fee Earners across the firm. This is a permanent position to cover evening support.

View the full job description here:

https://www.institutelegalsecretaries.com/recruitment/candidate/job/22339/

It has been a busy few months in the family courts, with a number of high-profile cases hitting the news. Previous articles are available in the monthly Journal archive from both September and October of this year, and we would encourage you to also read these to help you get to grips with this rapidly developing area of law.

1) Divorce and dishonesty

Two ex-wives who ‘accepted’ unfair divorce settlements appeared in the Supreme Court in October and their cases will now form a precedent for how dishonesty when disclosing assets will be treated in family courts.

Last month we looked at the advisability of checking the financial viability of the parties in a conveyancing transaction before contracts are actually exchanged. This month I want to deal with another pre-contract area which can possibly have disastrous consequences if you are not careful.

Case management systems are designed to monitor the life cycle of a case in order to manage the workflow of everybody dealing with the case. This makes the most effective use of everyone’s time. There are lots of different systems available to perform this task, but they all have a lot in common when it comes to the features on offer.

Different systems have different types of law firms in mind. There are software systems, which are specifically programmed for small law firms that have only a few cases on the go at any one time, and there are other systems for larger law firms handling many cases at once. There are also some systems which are designed to cater for specialisms and niches within the legal profession, such as medical law or intellectual property law.

On one level, there are as many answers to this question as there are legal secretaries and lawyers. Every working relationship is different, and most of us will have found out that what perfectly suits one relationship doesn’t work at all in another.

However, as someone who has worked both as a Legal Secretary and as a lawyer, I think that there is one quality that most lawyers would agree is essential to the makeup of a really good Legal Secretary or PA. This is a quality that transcends personality types and practice specialisms, and you need it whether you are working for a family lawyer or a commercial lawyer, and whether your boss is permanently frantic or completely chilled. Looked at from the other side of the desk, your fundamental skill is to make your boss’s job easier, however you achieve it.

In April 2015, new charges came into effect which have dramatically increased the cost of court proceedings in England and Wales. Since these charges were put in place, there has been much protest from civil liberty groups and legal professionals. Over 50 magistrates across England and Wales have stepped down as a direct result of the charges. They believe that the increase in the price of justice violates the core principles of the Magna Carta (which incidentally celebrated its 800th birthday in 2015).