A criminal defence practice works around bail hearings, police stations and trial dates, often at short notice. Juniors and clerks carry urgent calls, sensitive client details and long days in court corridors.
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Share your requirementsA criminal defence practice represents people accused of offences, from bail applications to trials and appeals. The team is usually a senior advocate or principal, junior advocates who appear in different courts, clerks who track dates and prepare files, and a front desk where worried families arrive. Urgent matters come at night and at weekends, such as arrests, remand hearings and bail. Court days run long with waiting in corridors. Case papers contain very sensitive material, and clients and families call anxiously at all hours. Juniors learn fast through appearances and then are tempted to set up their own chambers. Fee collection is uneven. See also HR for professional services.
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 criminal defence 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 night arrest or remand needs an advocate within hours, yet there is no rota, so the same junior is rung every time.
A junior may wait through a long list for a short hearing, with no way to plan meals, travel or personal commitments.
Statements, medical papers and family details move through bags, phones and messaging groups, and loose handling puts clients at risk.
Staff face distress and anger without training, and some leave because the emotional load is not recognised.
A fast-growing junior is sent alone to difficult hearings with a thin brief, and a mistake damages both client and confidence.
Trial and bail dates sit in several notebooks, and a clash or lapse can cost a client their liberty.
Uneven payments make staff pay unsteady, and juniors leave for steadier chambers.
Clerks know court staff, procedures and papers by habit, and no one is being trained to follow them.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Employee Administration; Career and Succession Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
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.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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.
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.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a criminal defence lawyers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A weekly roster of who takes night and weekend calls, with a backup, an agreed time off after a call-out and a modest allowance.
A weekly roster of who takes night and weekend calls, with a backup, an agreed time off after a call-out and a modest allowance. Put it through the attendance, shift and leave process.
A shared calendar for every case, checked each evening by two people, with reminders for bail and trial dates.
A shared calendar for every case, checked each evening by two people, with reminders for bail and trial dates.
Where originals are kept, who may carry them, which apps may be used and what must not be shared, written into staff terms through the HR documentation process.
Where originals are kept, who may carry them, which apps may be used and what must not be shared, written into staff terms through the HR documentation process.
Grade matters by difficulty and assign accordingly, with a senior briefing before and a short debrief after.
Grade matters by difficulty and assign accordingly, with a senior briefing before and a short debrief after.
Short training on dealing with distress, a quiet room and regular check-ins.
Short training on dealing with distress, a quiet room and regular check-ins. The workplace health, safety and wellbeing work covers it.
A second person shadows the clerk on dates, registry and files, with a written note of procedures.
A second person shadows the clerk on dates, registry and files, with a written note of procedures.
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.
A call rota with rest and cover that does not rely on goodwill.
Confidentiality and file-handling terms signed by every staff member.
Support for staff who deal with distress and long court days.
A graded path for juniors and a successor path for clerks.
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.
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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 two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
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Use a published weekly rota with a backup, give time off after a night call-out and agree a modest allowance. Fairness matters more than size.
Set written rules for storage, travel and messaging, restrict who may carry originals and keep a sign-out record. Check legal duties with a qualified professional.
Grade matters by difficulty, brief them before and discuss after. A junior who is stretched slowly, rather than suddenly, stays.
Training to handle distress, a clear script for what can be said, a break space and someone to talk to after hard calls.
One shared diary, two people checking each evening and reminders ahead of key dates. Personal notebooks should feed into it.
The call rota, file handling, the clerk's know-how and the junior brief are common starting points. We first hear how a typical urgent week runs. Scope, timing and fees come in writing.
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