“I have seen the Firm change from that of a fairly stuffy and staid private client Firm to a dynamic, modern, commercial Firm”
None, unless you count working in British Home Stores on Saturday mornings. I started at Withers the Monday after leaving school!
The Real Estate Department is very friendly and hard working. It’s divided into three teams, residential, commercial and rural. Withers are unusual for a City firm in that we have both a large residential section and a large rural section (being joint number 1 in the legal 500 for agricultural law).
My role is to ensure the smooth running of the department. A major part of my role is to ensure that adequate secretarial cover is available within the department at all times and to ease the administrative burden of the Practice Group Leader. I am the first point of contact within the department for other support departments and I generally deal with any departmental organizing. Apart from the secretarial cover side of the role, I am also responsible for organizing appraisals for fee-earners, trainees and secretaries as well as organizing all departmental meetings In short, I am mother hen, agony aunt and chief nag of the department!
I joined the firm in 1977 which seems a lifetime ago - and it actually is to some of the members of my department who take great delight in reminding me that they were not even born when I joined Withers! A lot has changed in that time, the most marked change being the size of the firm and the areas of expertise now available and of course the modernization of technology. I have seen the Firm change from that of a fairly stuffy and staid private client firm to a dynamic, modern, commercial firm which has managed to retain many of its old values. When I joined we were housed in two large converted Victorian houses. Many of the offices were oak-panelled. Air-conditioning didn't exist (we had windows which we opened when we were hot and closed when we were cold!) E-mail was unheard of - contact was made by telephone (remember that?). If an urgent message needed to be sent then it was the delight of the telex machine for me. Even fax machines were still a thing of the future! Photocopying could be sent to the print room by means of a ‘dumb-waiter’. Whilst the firm has grown (indeed I have worked in 5 different buildings due to that growth), there remains that friendly, small firm atmosphere and no amount of technological advances have managed to change that fact.
If you want to join a busy yet friendly firm then Withers could be for you. We all work hard but we find time for play too.