How we help

Baskerville Drummond is an independent IT consultancy specialising in supporting law firms. The business is comprised of five consultants working remotely across England. Jen was recommended to David Baskerville, founder of the company, via LinkedIn and has been supporting the team since November 2021. David has kindly provided the following feedback on how arrangements are working out so far.

David Baskerville
Founder of Baskerville Drummond

The problem

As a team we struggled to undertake the actions required to manage the business, including business development. We tried a couple of options in terms of support, but neither worked out, due to the high paced nature of the business.

We were introduced to Jen on LinkedIn, by a couple of contacts who operate in a similar market and in similar ways to ourselves, and we were delighted with the introduction.

The process

Jen was quickly able to assess our needs and is a good sounding board for our business. She put processes in place to support us with various marketing activities, including our regular production of articles and liaising with clients to obtain testimonials and case studies.

Jen proofreads all our reports and knowledge leadership articles. She manages our diaries, posts on social media on our behalf and liaises with our third-party web developer. Jen has developed systems, for example for the organising and running of our regular webinar series and she creates task lists to make sure everything is done.

The result

In short, Jen makes sure we know what we need to do and when we need to do it. The best thing about Jen is her personality and she fit straight in with the team. In fact we see has as part of the team, we don’t see her as an external supplier. She joins us on our away days remotely and takes meeting actions. She has a very nice way of reminding us of the things we should be doing that we’re not doing.

As Jen has become more involved in the business, she has proactively suggested ways in which she can help us further. Jen has recently taken on additional responsibilities, for example helping us with client onboarding activities, which is already saving time for our consultants. I couldn’t recommend Jen highly enough – she’s now an integral part of our team.

Roche Legal is an award-winning boutique law firm in York, specialising in private client work. Jen provided Virtual Assistant and Practice Management support to Rachel Roche, Managing Director of Roche Legal, from September 2019 to May 2022. Rachel kindly gave this feedback on why she decided to work with a Virtual Assistant and how it benefited her and her business.

Rachel Roche
Managing Director, Roche Legal

The problem

As a sole practitioner solicitor, I was getting bogged down in the day-to-day administration of running the business, such as maintaining systems and keeping up with non-client meetings. Business development projects that I wanted to get on with also weren’t getting done as quickly as I would have liked, because I was having to deal with small jobs that were getting in the way.

As tempting as it was to continue in the same vein, with the emails piling up in my inbox, I realised that I needed some help to ensure that I was using my time in the most effective way. This is when I took the plunge and met with Jen, who had been recommended to me by several contacts, to see what she thought.

The process

Jen was able to quickly assess where she could take on regular and ad-hoc tasks and projects for me and I set about promising myself to delegate anything non-client related to her. This started off by me forwarding any and all non-client emails to Jen and, as time went on, I was able to redirect many of these emails straight to her, so I no longer needed to even see them. We held a weekly virtual meeting to round up where we were with my diary and the various projects that I had delegated and we set priorities for the coming week. In the main, I used emails to delegate tasks and meeting requests to Jen, and also assigned repeat monthly and weekly tasks, such as management reporting.

Projects that Jen assisted me with include completing our professional indemnity application for the coming year, renewal of practising certificates, dealing with our application to become an approved STEP Employer Partner, creating processes for on-boarding clients, writing FAQs for our online reception team, updating our process manual, writing and advertising a new vacancy, arranging events and streamlining our client quoting process for new work.

The result

I was better able to make decisions in the best interest of the firm, because the small jobs that didn’t need my input were taken away from me entirely. My email traffic decreased exponentially. Projects that would otherwise still be in progress were completed and I had a clearer idea of the direction of travel. I also found Jen very helpful to bounce ideas around with and I trusted her to discuss my firm’s business much like I would do with an in-house practice manager. Although I was unsure at the start how using a VA would work in practice, for me it ended up feeling no different to having someone in the office. Jen was responsive and reliable and I am very pleased to have had her on board.

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.

Mosaic Legal is comprised of five legal and financial specialists. In addition to running their own practices, they combined forces to create a collaboration facilitating mergers, acquisitions and restructuring for law firms and in fact 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.

Howard Hackney
Mosaic Legal

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 difficult 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 enable her 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 full 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.