Insolvency practices handle creditors' claims, resolution applications and hearings before tribunals, on long files with hard timelines. Pressure is steady, the subject is distressing and juniors need careful training to hold their ground.
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Share your requirementsAn insolvency and bankruptcy practice acts for lenders, companies, directors and professionals who run the process. A partner or senior advocate leads, with associates who draft applications and replies, paralegals who prepare claim files and tracking sheets, and clerks who attend tribunal listings and file papers. A single matter may carry hundreds of claims, long documents and many hearings spread over months. Dates for filing, replies and appearances are fixed, and a missed one can harm the client. The work is detailed and often upsetting, since businesses are failing and people are losing jobs. Juniors spend long hours reading balance sheets and agreements. Travel between benches and cities is common. Good associates are sought by banks and recovery teams. See also HR for law firms.
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 insolvency 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.
Replies, filings and hearings fall on the same days across several cases, and the diary is a constant source of anxiety.
Reviewing and sorting hundreds of claims tires the paralegals and errors slip in during long stretches.
Drafts reach the partner the night before a hearing, leaving no room to correct and no calm for the associate.
Working with failing businesses and unpaid workers is draining, and no one talks about it.
An associate may be sent to a bench with little preparation, and a poor day goes unspoken and uncoached.
When a matter changes hands, the notes, pending items and instructions sit in one person's inbox.
Long days at tribunals, with adjourned matters and late listings, eat hours that were meant for drafting.
A lender's legal department offers regular hours and a fixed salary to anyone who knows the process well.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
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.
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 insolvency lawyers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A single calendar of filing, reply and hearing dates by matter, with two named owners for each date.
A single calendar of filing, reply and hearing dates by matter, with two named owners for each date. Use attendance and leave planning so cover is arranged ahead.
A rule that drafts reach the partner a fixed number of days before a hearing, and a short checklist for each kind of application.
A rule that drafts reach the partner a fixed number of days before a hearing, and a short checklist for each kind of application.
A standard format for claim sorting, a second person checking a sample, and rotation so one paralegal does not spend months on the same pile.
A standard format for claim sorting, a second person checking a sample, and rotation so one paralegal does not spend months on the same pile.
A brief before each hearing, a debrief after, and a stepped path from watching to arguing.
A brief before each hearing, a debrief after, and a stepped path from watching to arguing. Record it in learning plans.
What is pending, who the contacts are and what was promised, kept with the file and held in your documentation.
What is pending, who the contacts are and what was promised, kept with the file and held in your documentation.
A named person to talk to, sensible hours around peaks and a quiet check on those on the hardest matters.
A named person to talk to, sensible hours around peaks and a quiet check on those on the hardest matters. See wellbeing.
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.
Cover for filing and hearing dates, and fair leave around heavy weeks.
A stepped route for associates to learn drafting and appearing.
Handover notes and role descriptions that stay when people move.
Support for staff dealing with distressing matters and long days.
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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Keep one diary, give every date two owners and review it weekly. A date with only one owner is a date waiting to be missed.
Use a clear format, a second check on a sample and rotation between matters. Long unbroken stretches on one pile produce errors.
Move them from observing to a minor application to a fuller hearing, each time with a brief and a debrief. A partner's trust grows with each step.
Acknowledge it, share the hardest matters, keep hours sensible after peaks and give people someone to talk to. Silence makes it worse.
You may not match regular hours, so offer responsibility early, fair pay reviews and visible progress to senior associate. Be honest about the trade-offs.
Your date-heavy weeks, how drafts reach partners, how claim files are shared and why associates leave. A review timetable, a handover note format or a junior development path is a likely start. Scope, timing and fees are put in writing after that talk.
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