Interested in joining us?
What we offer
We offer pretty much everything that a traditional chambers offers with the exception of rooms as our members work from home. (We believe that is a 5% saving on an average chambers rent). We do have a hot desking facility at 160 Fleet Street in the middle of legal London and also in Manchester in Deansgate. We don't have chambers meetings and we don't do politics. We make clear and transparent decisions and communicate openly with everyone via our chambers operating manual.
We are regulated by the BSB and we have a Head of Chambers (Harry Hodgkin) for the purposes of the BSB Handbook. Our clerking systems and procedures are documented, and our services are available online 24/7 via our Intranet. Our clerks are located in our purpose-built (freehold owned) 6000 sq ft HQ, located on a prestigious business park at J25 of the M5, Taunton with neighbours including Kennedys, Clarke Willmott, Ashfords, Foot Anstey & Porter Dodson.
Our services include:
1. Marketing & work generation:
- for barristers, including advice, paperwork and attending court and public access work for barristers qualified to accept instructions using the public access rules.
- for mediators.
2. Matthew Wildish is our Director of Clerking and his role is to take Clerksroom to the next stage and to develop new products and services within the legal marketplace. His aim is to help build on the successes of Clerksroom to date and further promote our ambitious growth plans.
3. Senior Clerk. Greg Speller undertakes the usual duties associated with this traditional role. Greg is also responsible for managing chambers’ complaints policy and process. Complaints about Clerksroom are few and far between as we take pride in doing our best to get it right the first time, every time.
4. Diary clerks. Accepting new work, managing existing work and all the usual associated diary management tasks.
5. Fees clerks. Negotiation of fees, fee agreements, agreeing on block contracts with solicitors or complex contracts for bulk work with major providers, our fees team look after it all. We have a billing clerk for sending invoices out and 4 fee collection clerks.
6. Case management. Our case manager is responsible for all incoming paperwork, be it hard copy or digital, instructions to advise or briefs to attend court. Papers that arrive in the post or DX to HQ are scanned and recorded on the case file, shared via our secure intranet or forwarded on to your home DX box if requested. We try to avoid paper being passed around if we can, it is expensive to post/DX or print instructions and we encourage the use of electronic files where possible.
7. Payment processing. Our payments clerk monitors cheque payments, BACS payments and card payments centrally and issues the receipts as they are received. Cheques are banked weekly.
8. Mediation. Our mediation team is respected as a market leader with 3 dedicated mediation clerks. Any full member who is also a qualified mediator is automatically added to our list of available mediators and offered for mediation work.
9. People Management. From initial enquiry about joining to induction, ongoing practice development or retirement, our 30+ strong clerking team is here to help find the answers.
10. Library. We have a group scheme with Butterworths Lexis Nexis that allows us to provide the full range of Lexis Nexis digital library services to our members for an additional £100 PCM. Members can opt in or opt-out of the library scheme as they wish.
11. Home DX. Most members have a home DX box for which they pay a small joining fee and a small annual subscription There is usually a 24/7 DX box near to your home. Our case manager Hazel Altria makes the necessary arrangements and liaises with DX for all new members if they wish.
12. I.T. As a market-leading chambers, you would expect us to have market-leading technology. We designed and built a cloud-based case management system, connected to our intranet and website. We take bookings and instructions online and our team of clerks manage them both on and offline. We provide all of the I.T. needed to practice at the Bar and deploy it using our MyClerksroom intranet. We connect with smartphones, iPads, and laptops and have an I.T. support desk for any setup or issues you may have. Our new intranet is accessible from our website and allows you to update your website profile and manage mediation enquiries, public access enquiries and access a host of centrally provided services including our market-leading in-house software where you set your work preferences.
13. Telephone. We believe our array of online systems is there to complement our most important tool, the telephone. We know people still like to speak on the phone, however well-connected we may be in other ways. Our diary team of six clerks take an average of 3,500 telephone calls a month. Our barristers have a dedicated support line directing them to the most appropriate clerk for the help they need. Solicitors call us and book hearings, seek advice on suitability, fees and all the normal questions fielded by any clerk. By being innovative online, we have created more time to devote to the telephone as and when needed.
Click here to view our video showing a little bit about our culture, from the perspective of people who have worked with us. Our culture is central to everything we do and everyone we work with.
Our charges are 15% of income, paid monthly in arrears by direct debit, but we plan to move to deduction at source from 1st January 2023. We deliberately do not use a flat fee model – we feel that charging a percentage plus any additional services you wish to subscribe to is a fairer, more flexible, and transparent system for our members. The are no other costs.
We have an amazing team of clerks, and we welcome working with like-minded, pleasant people who value teamwork.
Our package includes:
- Full clerking services
- Website profile you can edit from your MyClerksroom account
- Professional profile review for LinkedIn and website
- Practice review and practice design
- Membership of Clerksroom Chambers
- Priority access to Clerksroom Online
- Exclusive Membership of Clerksroom Mediation (if a qualified mediator)
- Membership of Clerksroom Direct (if public access qualified)
- Web-based case management software, Chambers 365
- Managed private email, filtering and archive
- Managed Office 365
- Integrated Xero cloud-based accounting software
- I.T. support
- Marketing Support
- Lexis Nexis Library (all digital products) at a reduced rate
- Ability to submit articles to Lexology
- The benefit of group buying deals on other library products
- Our amazing culture comes free with every package
Additional services available if required at additional cost:
- London & Manchester address, hot desk, post, DX and reception services, PC, printer & scanner. £150 + VAT PCM. See our 160 Fleet St, mini brochure.
- Bookkeeping Service: Includes VAT returns, cloud accounting software with mobile expenses app. (Does not include tax assessments and final accounts) Total cost of £175 + VAT PCM.
- Managed home DX.
- HyperLaw Integration - £25 + VAT pcm
- Managed personal I.T. helpdesk. The service covered personal I.T. support for all home/family PCs, laptops, and mobile devices for a monthly cost of £33 + VAT. Provided by Eloquent Technologies, our main I.T. supplier.
For more information on how to apply please contact Kevin Morrow on M: 07736 288 055, Russell Hobbs on M: 07972 239476 or Matthew Wildish on M: 07508 697596 in total confidence, or by email using joinus@clerksroom.com
