Knowledge is power, and knowledge of the market for your own job is always empowering, even if you’re not thinking of moving in the foreseeable future. That knowledge can help protect you against shocks to your earning power or even your job security.

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

Property/Conveyancing Secretary – Quality Solicitors Rose & Rose

Location: Kingston Upon Thames

Salary: £18,000 - £23,000 dependant on experience and credentials

Closing Date: 31/12/16

Property/conveyancing secretary with experience required to join the team at Quality Solicitors Rose & Rose based in Kingston Upon Thames.

View the full job description here:

https://www.institutelegalsecretaries.com/jobs/candidate/job/28440/

Residential Property Secretary – Howell-Jones LLP

Location: Cheam

Salary: Competitive

A New App Aims to Make You Less Apologetic

Here’s an interesting game to play if you monitor your boss’s emails. How many of the incoming emails start off by apologising (“I’m sorry to bother you, but ...”) or by minimising the subject (“I just need a quick word with you about ...”)? And of those, how many have been written by women? I’ll say this next bit in a whisper: are you even a bit guilty of doing this yourself?

The thinking behind Just Not Sorry, a new app for Gmail, is that women in particular (though not just women!) are prone to sabotaging the content of their emails by using certain words. The app works by highlighting the “weasel words” in your emails and giving you the opportunity to substitute them with something less, well, apologetic.

Joining a professional organisation is the best thing you can do for your career. It enables you to advance your skills, develop yourself professionally, show that you are committed to your career, and be recognised for the value work that you do. ILSPA provides its Members with many benefits, which are sought by those wanting support in their careers and law firms that want their staff to excel in their roles.

Journals

A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.

Let’s say you want to start a new habit such as an exercise programme or quit a bad habit such as sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with this change in behaviour for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.

Ever since the early 1990s, when the heinous murder of James Bulger was heard in Preston Crown Court, the English judicial system has slowly realised that there are plenty of occasions when certain defendants and trial witnesses need to be protected from the hugely intimidating environment of a courtroom.

Whilst the entire country was in uproar back in 1993 when the 10-year-old Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were tried for the murder of James Bulger, in their determination and haste to bring these boys to justice at that time, our country’s legal system broke just about every rule in the book. This was to the extent that the English legal system was later criticised severely by the European Court of Human Rights in 1999 for failing to give Thompson and Venables a fair trial.

The Robots Are Coming

The fresh, shiny new year has arrived, and I hope that you are also feeling fresh and shiny after the holiday break. What will 2016 hold for you, jobwise?

Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance, but one major development during 2015 that is likely to have some impact on your firm (and therefore on you) in the next year is the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence (AI) and the law.

Some big claims are being made for recent developments: there has been talk of “the demise of lawyers”, and of 2016 being a watershed moment in legal business. Reports that lawyers are going to be obliterated have been much exaggerated, but it is likely that within the next couple of years, AI is going to start affecting your work – in good ways and in bad.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In light of a Family Justice Review that was undertaken, HM Courts and Tribunals Service have decided to create a new single Family Court in England and Wales. Effectively, this will pull this area of law away from the county courts and should mean that this division of the legal system is able to deal with relevant cases far more expeditiously and cost-effectively. 

Specifically, when it comes to applications for divorce in the future, applicants should find that this process will be far easier; especially when a decree nisi is not being contested by the other party. Instead of being sent to your local county court, you will now be required to forward an application for a decree nisi and statement to support the divorce to one of 11 regional centres that will be set up across England and Wales.

Be honest, now. On the final day of the Christmas hols, when you were tidying the last of the festive debris from your handbag or pockets and thinking about your first day back at work, did your heart lighten – or sink? Or was it somewhere in the middle? 

There are exceptions to every rule, but it’s not generally a good sign if you are either ecstatic or profoundly depressed to be back in the office. Even if you are somewhere in the middle, it’s worth taking some time as you start the new year to decide where you are on the spectrum, and to consider whether making one or more work-related resolutions for the new year might help.

In recent months we have written about the major changes to how litigation clients are paying for legal advice. Legal services are now being unbundled so clients can “pick and mix” when they want to pay for legal advice and when they will do it themselves. This month we will consider how unbundled legal advice fits in with representation at court hearings. This type of representation is commonly called advocacy, and traditionally it is a service that has been provided by barristers or solicitors on behalf of their clients. Following changes to the scope of legal aid funding in April 2013, there has been widespread concern that individuals will be forced to represent themselves in court (known as litigants in person).