How we help

Mosaic Legal is comprised of five legal and financial specialists. In addition to running their practices, they combined forces to create a collaboration facilitating mergers, acquisitions and restructuring for law firms and anything to do with ownership issues. Jen started working with Mosaic Legal in December 2017. They were one of her first Business Owl clients, and she continues to support them today. Howard has kindly given this feedback on behalf of the group.

The problem

On forming our collaboration, we had several brainstorming sessions, enthusiastically coming up with lots of ideas for driving the venture forward, although we found it challenging to action our ideas because:

(a) We all have many demands on our time
(b) The five of us are located in different parts of the country, which makes regular meet-ups difficult
(c) Nobody was ‘in charge’ on a day-to-day basis, and as a result, nobody held any of us to account for the tasks we promised each other we would complete
(d) In other words, we needed somebody to “nag” us!

We decided to look for a Virtual Assistant to help us. We were delighted to discover Jen and the services she offers through Business Owl. We immediately found her to be personable and easy to get on with, yet business-like and focused. We were also drawn to Jen because of her legal qualifications and experience of working in private practice.

The process

Once we had brought Jen up to speed on the background of our business and what we wanted to achieve, we relayed the contents of our various brainstorming sessions to her. Her initial task was to digest our wish list and present us with her suggestions for moving the work forward.

Jen did this articulately and methodically, and divided the tasks into phase 1 and phase 2. Jen identified that phase 1 should be centred around bringing our WordPress website up-to-date, setting up Google Analytics and linking up our various social media platforms. Phase 2 would relate to ongoing work, providing support to keep us organised. This included planning our meetings, providing agendas and minutes and ensuring that actions are followed up on.

Jen also diplomatically advised us on what she needed from us to complete the work. We were given accurate timescales and costings from the outset.

The result

Although we believed that an extra pair of hands would make a difference to our business, our expectations have been exceeded in the following ways:

(a) We have been able to hand tasks over to Jen in complete confidence that they will be done efficiently and to a high standard
(b) We feel assured of Jen’s professional judgement – she takes the initiative and works independently for the majority of the time, yet occasionally refers back to us to have the final say when needed
(c) Jen applies “gentle but persistent pressure” to hold us to account. We know that tasks which would still be on our to-do list are being actioned, which in turn is driving our business forward in a way that we couldn’t manage alongside our other commitments
(d) All of this is achieved virtually, with excellent lines of communication throughout – we were early adopters of Skype, before the impetus of the pandemic, and now Zoom and Teams have been integral to effective working and the enabling of our vision.

We have worked with Jen since 2017, and she is an integral part of our joint venture, holding us all to account and helping us to drive the business forward. She has also been instrumental in helping us get our Virtual Coffee Break videos off the ground (which we started during the pandemic), and which has gained us significant traction on social media.

We have been able to involve Jen in various other projects over the years and have recommended her to many other busy professionals in the legal sector.