Last week, there was once again cause for celebration at Hugh Jones Solicitors as we were crowned Medium Firm of the Year at the Manchester Legal Awards, which recognises and celebrates the legal talent within our region.
This year, the annual dinner was replaced by a virtual ceremony presented by Chief Executive, Fran Eccles-Bech and President, Matt Taylor, so we tuned in from home and were absolutely thrilled to be awarded in what was a very strong category. The judges stated that “despite the devastating impact of Covid on many of their vulnerable clients, the firm had achieved an excellent performance by way of strong leadership and culture.”
For the submission, we were asked to detail the firm’s top highlights from the last year – all achievements that we’re hugely proud of.
Firstly, the successful overnight switch to homeworking for 90% of staff during the pandemic whilst providing an unbroken high quality service to our clients – based on previous months of intensive planning and testing. We doubled our IT capacity, set up 45 new home offices, invested in a desk booking/track and trace app to manage safe office working and app-based telephone software to provide seamless service to clients.
We also achieved our highest ever year-on-year growth in new instructions – despite all the challenges of the last year, we have seen a 27% increase in new work, recruited and bedded in additional specialist staff and had a 66% increase in work in progress in the year to 1st April 2021.
Finally, our wider team was recognised externally in Chambers, Legal 500 and the National Wills and Probate Awards and we received shining client testimonials. We’re extremely proud that we can now include the Manchester Legal Awards in our list of achievements for 2021.
You can find out more about the awards here.