A practice built on cheque bounce and recovery matters handles a high volume of notices, filings and hearings. Clerks, junior advocates and a tight diary make limitation dates, client updates and workload fairness the people priorities.
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Share your requirementsA practice focused on cheque bounce and recovery work handles many similar matters for traders, lenders, small companies and individuals. Each case has a chain: a demand notice, a wait, a complaint or suit, summons, appearances, evidence and orders. A senior advocate guides strategy and argues key points, junior advocates draft notices and complaints and appear in routine hearings, and clerks and assistants keep files, track dates, serve papers and visit courts. Volume is the feature. A busy practice may have hundreds of live matters spread over several courts, each with its own date, and clients ring daily to ask about progress. A missed date or limitation period can lose a client's money and the practice its name. Related reading: HR for professional services. Court days are long and unpredictable, so juniors and clerks wait for hours, and the office runs partly from courtrooms and corridors, which makes supervision and records harder.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in cheque bounce and recovery lawyers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A missed hearing or limitation date harms the client, and the fault is traced to a clerk's slip.
Dozens of similar matters are handed over without a limit, and each junior hurries and copies.
They wait all day at courts, with no fixed hours, no rest and little oversight.
Clients ask daily for updates, and juniors spend hours answering instead of drafting.
Papers move between office, court and home, and a lost file means a lost day.
Strategy and judgement stay with a few, and juniors learn by watching in the court.
Early-career advocates carry the volume work, and the ones with options leave to set up alone.
Fees, settlements and cheque deposits need clear handling and records.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Operations and Governance; Employee Administration; Performance Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a cheque bounce and recovery lawyers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A shared diary with dates, courts, matter owners and a reminder a week and a day ahead, checked by a second person.
A shared diary with dates, courts, matter owners and a reminder a week and a day ahead, checked by a second person. Keep the routine in the documentation process.
A number of live matters per junior, a weekly review with a senior and a way to hand over when overloaded.
A number of live matters per junior, a weekly review with a senior and a way to hand over when overloaded.
Standard attendance, court duty rosters, rest after long days and a daily report.
Standard attendance, court duty rosters, rest after long days and a daily report. See the attendance and shift process.
A standard message after each hearing, so clients get information without daily calls.
A standard message after each hearing, so clients get information without daily calls.
A file register, a sign-out sheet and a rule for originals, with a responsible person for each shelf or cabinet.
A file register, a sign-out sheet and a rule for originals, with a responsible person for each shelf or cabinet.
A mix of drafting, appearances and review, with mentoring and a route to take more responsibility.
A mix of drafting, appearances and review, with mentoring and a route to take more responsibility. The learning process holds the approach.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Diary, file register and role notes for a high volume practice.
Court duty rosters, rest and clerk hours that stay fair.
Junior advocate development beyond copying drafts.
Fair measures of accuracy and diary discipline.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
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Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
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Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
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A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
One diary, reminders ahead of each date, a second check and a rule that no date is cleared by one person alone. Review near misses.
It depends on the stage and complexity. Count live matters, weight them and set a sensible limit with a senior review.
Write duty rosters, record hours, give rest after long court days and set clear reporting. Confirm the working time position with a qualified professional.
Send a short update after each hearing and agree a weekly call time for large clients. Clients call less when they hear first.
Pay fairly, give them real work with feedback and show a route to more responsibility. Many leave because the volume work feels endless.
We would look at the diary system, matter loads per junior and clerk rosters. A matter limit and diary routine note is a likely opener. Scope, timing and fee are set out in writing afterwards.
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