Thanks 2022: A round up of Quill’s top stories

In this end-of-year round up, we’ve collated our 2022 highlights. It’s our way of appreciating the year that’s gone, thanking our valued clients and partners for joining us on the ride, and getting excited about what 2023 has in store. We hope you enjoy the storytelling…

January

Embracing the New Year sales vibe, we offered new-to-Quill clients a month’s free MyQuill software subscription. Involving existing clients too, we gifted a month’s free access to our add-on document management tool.

February

The Law Society of England and Wales welcomed Quill as one of its trusted practice management software affiliate partners and the first-ever recommended outsourced cashiering supplier, thereby presenting us with the ideal platform to take our passion for making life easier for law firms to a wider network of legal professionals.

In the same month, Chas Arya at Ratio Law spoke out about her experiences as a client of both solutions – software and outsourced services – in relation to overcoming compliance and lockdown challenges particularly.

March

Following our ‘Ending PDF AP1s’ webinar, we summarised how to prepare for the November mandated digital submission deadline. Plus, another client – Annette Goody at McCloy Legal – took to the podium about streamlined quarter- and year-end VAT procedures courtesy of her go-to legal accounting software.

April

A monumental month, Tom Wormald stepped up from Client Services Director – a role held for 5½ years – to Managing Director whilst Julian Bryan moved into the strategic position of Executive Chairman. Tom now leads our day-to-day operations, focused on engaging employees and delivering outstanding levels of customer care.

As April typically signifies the new financial year, we chose the British Heart Foundation as our charity partner with an ambitious fundraising target of £5,000.

May

Our first-ever webinar with the Law Society, ‘A guide to legal cashiering’, received over 700 registrants and afterwards we published ‘Six things to consider before outsourcing your legal cashiering’ to help law firms make the right decisions when it comes to the heavily regulated and error-fraught cashiering function.

Other top tips arrived via our blog covering important changes to divorce and family forms – specifically the D81 and FormE.

June

With more law firms on board with the outsourcing concept on the back of the coronavirus pandemic, for uninterrupted support during a period of serious disruption in so many aspects of business, we released ‘An ultimate guide to managed transcription’ full of golden nuggets from the guest speakers in our webinar of the same name – for those practices pondering moving to an outsourced model for typing.

An extra two post-webinar handy hints came in the form of Amy Roberts at Trafalgar Fiduciary Services Ltd advising budding start ups on survival strategies involving case management and legal accounts software, and legal cashiering back up, as well as a blog showcasing how to integrate workflows and accounts in the increasingly busy conveyancing space.

July

We hit a significant milestone with our 10,000th Quill user! Our free ebook catalogue grew with the addition of ‘The ultimate guide to legal cashiering’ which examined the tricks and traps to stay on the right side of the law, comply with regulations and protect your reputation.

August

Renowned for being a quiet month in the legal sector, we defied the trend and launched our new MyQuill software and refreshed app this month – a story covered in the Orange Rag. We also busied ourselves by proudly announcing our Best Companies accolades – ‘The UK’s 50 Best Mid-Sized Companies To Work For’ and 2-star status as ‘Outstanding To Work For’ amongst them.

In yet more post-webinar learnings, our ‘How to grow a law firm by adopting a growth mindset’ blog went live, featuring discussions on business growth, mistakes to avoid and key takeaways.

September

In our biggest charity challenge thus far, twelve employees undertook a 40-mile bike ride, 2-mile canoe and 12-mile hike in Cumbria to raise cash for the British Heart Foundation in our aptly named ‘Bikes, Boats & Boots’ epic event. We smashed our goal by raising £6,752 to save people’s lives from heart and circulatory diseases.

Our clients continued to say nice things with Rachael Gent at Gent Law imparting words of wisdom to entrepreneurs thinking of branching out on their own by waxing lyrical on how cloud-based legal accounts software is the ideal solution for those with limited internal resources and limited budgets, yet with an eye on future expansion.

Adding another feather to our cap, we were awarded silver decoration in the annual ILFM Law Firm Software Users Award.

October

Our ‘Six things to consider when buying legal software’ blog with accompanying ‘Legal practice management software buyer’s guide’ ebook were launched to the marketplace as the optimum toolkit to navigating the minefield of choosing the best fit – both supplier and software – for your business.

We launched the BETA phase in the development of our organiser tool in MyQuill – an app to drive efficiency and compliance. We added new software functionality such as a customisable kanban board for cases and we’re looking at more options to enhance new ways of working. If you’re interested in being part of, and influencing, the future development of organiser, we welcome BETA sites to use our systems and provide honest, constructive feedback. Email our team at organiserbeta@quill.co.uk.

November

With another webinar series under our belt, this time spotlighting what’s new, we issued timely blogs titled ‘Three developments in legal billing’ and ‘Digitisation of AP1’ offering law firms an easier, securer way to manage invoicing and providing instant access to the eAP1 form in time for the end-of-November cut-off date respectively.

For our second Law Society webinar of the year, we were joined by two brilliant experts from Google to examine the challenges of balancing data accessibility and data security for the legal industry. If you missed out, view exclusively on demand.

In our final testimonial of the year, Daryl Griffiths at Burnett Barket Solicitors carried on the legal forms conversation by telling how he made a sound decision in Quill Forms for digital submission capabilities, ease of use, responsive support and a whole lot more. And, we selected our accounts assistant Carla Morris as the winner of our prestigious Peter Dye Award for her exceptional performance in the workplace.

December

Alongside our inaugural breakfast training webinar on Tuesday 13th December, we ready ourselves for a well-deserved Christmas break at the same time as selling bonus balls to generate more money for the British Heart Foundation and collecting charity donations for the annual Mission Christmas appeal so that disadvantaged children in our local communities will wake up on Christmas morning to a gift from Santa.

We close from 12 noon on Friday 23rd December and reopen at 9am on Tuesday 3rd January. Please note that throughout this period, we’ll be constantly monitoring our servers and network infrastructure to give you an uptime guarantee, responding to urgent support queries to resolve any unexpected technical issues should they arise, as well as providing a skeleton cashiering service upon request to process urgent accounts transactions.

It’s worth knowing too that our outsourced typing service is often used for overflow support during busy periods or when short-staffed, traditionally over the Christmas season. Do get in touch if you’d like to instruct temporary assistance from your dependable supplier.