Kennedy Cater Legal

Wellingborough Homes is the most recent recruit to the Housing Associations Legal Alliance (HALA). The Northamptonshire based housing association joins this national alliance of social housing providers as its 10^th member.

Established in 2010 HALA’s aim is to ensure greater value for money in the delivery of legal services to its members. This is achieved through the joint procurement of external legal services (including the establishment of the HALA Solicitors Panel), free of charge Value Added Benefits (including training), and through the sharing of legal knowledge and best practice.

Dave Lockerman, Head of Housing and Customer Service at Wellingborough Homes, said,

‘Reducing costs and driving efficiency for the benefit of our residents is one of our key strategic objectives. Joining HALA will, I believe, help us to achieve this goal on a longer-term basis. Yet what also attracted us to membership of this national group was the quality of the value added benefits. These not only include an extensive and often bespoke training programme for our employees but also the innovative social benefits that it opens up to our residents such as mock interviews for job seekers, and work placements.’

Helen Edwards, Kennedy Cater’s Director of Public Sector team comments,

‘We are delighted to welcome Wellingborough Homes to HALA which continues to go from strength to strength. The Alliance is now a force to be reckoned with, offering substantial discounts on the costs of legal services, with over 200 fixed fees currently negotiated. At a time when the social housing sector is being particularly squeezed we look forward to welcoming more new members to this proven framework.’

Housing Associations from across the UK are eligible to join HALA. Anyone interested in discussing the opportunities offered by membership should contact Helen Edwards on: 020 7702 6018, m: 07825 151908 or by email at helen.edwards@kennedycater.com

On Wednesday, 11^th November, the latest in our series of Seminars was held in the beautiful surroundings of Church House Conference Centre in Westminster.

 The Autumn Seminar examined the issues involved in carrying out a Spend & Service review of legal services, and was delivered to a number of high profile delegates from Public Sector teams from across the UK.

This free seminar formed part of our rolling programme of events provided to help organisations in this increasingly squeezed sector.  It focused on helping delegates understand how they can change the way they procure and manage their legal services to save on cost and drive up quality. Key topics covered included how to:

• accurately assess current position and expenditure
• consider possible alternatives
• move towards the final stage of making recommendations for change

The Seminar was led by our Head of Public Sector, Helen Edwards, who used interactive discussions based on a case-study to help empower delegates to go back to their organisations with a proper understanding of what they spend on legal services, how their services are provided and how they can actively make savings and improvements.

This was our final event of the year and and we are now planning our next one which will be held early in 2016. 

Should you be interested in attending one of our future events please email Helen Edwards directly at helen.edwards@kennedycater.com  

The on-line magazine, Public Law Today, newly launched by the team behind Local Government Lawyer features an article by our Head of Public Sector, Helen Edwards. In Getting the Most from Your External Legal Suppliers (click to follow link), Helen outlines some of the ways public sector bodies can get more bang for their bucks

For the second time, Kennedy Cater have backed a survey undertaken by Local Government Lawyer Magazine, which examines the current and future challenges facing local government legal teams.

The Legal Department of the Future Survey has been distributed across the entire local government sector and aims to produce a true picture of how legal departments might respond to the current motivators for change.

The survey aims to identify the main challenges and ascertain how local authority legal departments will look in future. It examines the effect that changes to the structure of local government, the growth of outsourcing and spin-outs, the ongoing growth of shared services and the emergence of external trading models and Alternative Business Structures will have on the future shape of legal departments. It also looks at some of the key day-to-day issues affecting their management – workload, recruitment, training and the use of external advisers.

All participants will receive a copy of the full aggregated results when the survey is complete, providing valuable original benchmarking information.

Participants are also being invited to attend a roundtable session to discuss the results. Helen Edwards, Director of Kennedy Cater’s Public Sector team says, ‘being a part of these round table discussions provides a valuable insight into how public sector legal teams as a whole are responding to the pressures and expectations being increasingly placed upon them. Kennedy Cater’s sponsorship of this survey underlines our commitment to developing models that can closely support the sector in these changing times.’

The analysis of the results will also compare these answers to the earlier management survey sponsored by Kennedy Cater and conducted by Local Government Lawyer in 2013.

The survey can be viewed on the link below.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/legaldeptofthefuture