A property law practice runs on title searches, drafts and registry visits, with a few senior lawyers and many juniors and clerks. This is how to run people when client files, court dates and registration slots all pull at once.
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Share your requirementsA real estate legal practice is usually one or two senior advocates with a team of associates, law interns, drafting assistants, typists and field clerks. The work is title searches at registry offices, drafting sale deeds and agreements, due diligence for developers and banks, and appearances before authorities. Files carry clients' money-linked documents, so confidentiality is a daily matter. Deadlines come from registration slots, loan sanction dates and developer launches, not from your own calendar. Juniors learn by doing, and seniors rarely have time to teach. Clerks and runners often work on thin pay and informal terms. For the wider sector, read HR for construction and real estate.
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 real estate legal consultants. 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.
An associate is handed a title search with no checklist and finds the gap only when the senior reviews it late at night.
A bank sanction date or registration slot fixes the draft deadline, and the whole team works late with no recovery time.
Original documents pass between runner, clerk, associate and client with no record of who held them when.
Staff discuss a developer's land deal on a phone call in the corridor, and nobody has told them not to.
Interns draft and search for months, then leave with no feedback, no certificate and sometimes no payment.
Field staff are paid in cash by the visit, with no attendance or expense record, and leave when a better office calls.
The partner knows which registry office is slow and which surveyor to trust, and none of it is written down.
Without a visible route from junior to independent drafting, capable associates start their own chambers or join a larger firm.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Employee Administration; Policies, Compliance and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
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.
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.
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.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a real estate legal consultants business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A written checklist for each document type, with a senior sign-off step, so learning does not depend on luck.
A written checklist for each document type, with a senior sign-off step, so learning does not depend on luck. Teach it through a simple learning routine.
Who took which original document, when, and when it came back, signed by the receiver.
Who took which original document, when, and when it came back, signed by the receiver. Hold staff details in your employee records.
A one-page rule on client matters, phones, shared screens and what leaves the office, signed at joining.
A one-page rule on client matters, phones, shared screens and what leaves the office, signed at joining. Keep it with your HR documents.
A letter with duration, tasks, any stipend, a supervisor and an end-of-term review.
A letter with duration, tasks, any stipend, a supervisor and an end-of-term review. Confirm the form of engagement with a qualified professional.
A daily visit sheet with place, purpose, time and cost, checked weekly, so field pay is fair and traceable.
A daily visit sheet with place, purpose, time and cost, checked weekly, so field pay is fair and traceable. See attendance and leave steps.
Stages from searching to drafting to client handling, with what is expected at each.
Stages from searching to drafting to client handling, with what is expected at each. Link it to a yearly performance conversation.
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.
Checklists and review routines so juniors learn the drafting craft faster and with fewer errors.
One record for associates, interns and clerks, with terms and supervisors written down.
A yearly conversation that shows associates the path from searching to independent drafting.
Confidentiality notes, intern letters and clerk terms in plain, consistent documents.
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 construction and real estate, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Site engineers, supervisors, crews and sales teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between projects.
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A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
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.
7 min readRead article
How an India head can sort a global parent's HR policies into apply, adapt or replace, write an India addendum with advisers, and keep headquarters on side.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Write checklists for common documents, pair each junior with one senior reviewer and review a sample of work weekly. The checklist carries the knowledge when the partner is in court.
Give them a written letter with duration, tasks, a supervisor and an end review. Do not leave them on real client work without guidance, and confirm any stipend rules with a qualified professional.
Use a simple movement log signed by whoever takes and returns each document, and keep a named custodian for each open file.
Explain the reasons, write a short rule, repeat it at joining and when a sensitive matter opens. Rules that are explained are followed more than rules that are posted.
Usually because the path to independent work is unclear and late nights bring no recognition. A ladder with stages and regular feedback changes that quickly.
Agree rates and expenses in writing, keep a visit sheet and review it weekly. Confirm the correct engagement form with a qualified professional.
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