Case Study: Acuity Law build a culture of compliance with Access Legal

From its inception in 1999, the firm has grown significantly having achieved a turnover in excess of £12 million in 2021, with further impressive growth plans in place for the next five years.

As a result of its growth, the firm faced challenges in keeping its risk and regulatory compliance standards in line with its commercial growth, which as Operations Director, Rob Heaton explains “required freshening up.”

Rob joined the firm in the summer of 2020 and immediately set to work on improving compliance standards to better manage the firm’s risk. "At the time we had six-monthly routine file audits by Access Legal of 50 random files, but this wasn’t really working. We’d have our audits, seek to address any areas for improvement but then not get a sense of whether any progress had been made for further six months."

A risk-based approach to file auditing

Rob partnered with Access Legal’s Risk and Compliance team to identify a better way of getting more value out of the file audits. “We decided to take a risk-based approach and complete audits little and often rather than a big batch every six months. Rather than randomly selecting fifty files, we opted to half the number of files audited each quarter and to specifically focus on a particular practice area or work-type”.

“The audits are used as a health check or benchmarking exercise, then the following quarter, we monitor, and review improvements made. It’s been a particularly effective exercise in bringing compliance to the forefront of fee-earners minds and in starting to build that culture of compliance.”

Using an independent, external auditor brings Acuity Law many benefits as Rob explains:

We’ve found terrific value in having somebody outside of the firm identifying areas of improvement. This provides us with a better understanding of how we should record and store data. There’s a bit of a bedding in period around that but it does provide a practical roadmap for improvement.

"Compliance is a moving feast and there will always be areas for firms to address, but we’re actively making improvements and Access Legal are helping us do that."

Working more efficiently through compliance

Many fee-earners may find compliance a burden that adds more work and slows them down, but that doesn’t have to be the case, as Rob attests:

Some of the policies implemented off the back of the file audits have actually improved efficiencies. We’ve adopted ways of working to avoid adding to workloads and we’re embedding that into our everyday working structure without taking more time.

"It’s much easier with new starters as we’re able to indoctrinate them into our compliance process from day-one and develop their understanding of the impact file auditing procedures have and more importantly the consequences for them as fee-earners."

"If we hadn’t worked with Access Legal to find a different way of approaching it, we’d still be doing it the same way we did five years ago and have less impact on helping inform the review of our risk management practices."

Working with Access Legal to improve compliance

Having worked with Access Legal for several years, Rob has built a great reputation with the Access Legal Risk and Compliance team, partnering with them on firm compliance and identifying ways to do things better.

"The team has been fantastic. We’ve had two or three different auditors to date, and we have a great relationship with each of them."

"Their approach is always constructive. It’s not how you would expect - an auditor turns over every nook and cranny to give you a chastising and tell you how naughty you’ve been. There’s always practical discussions post-submission of the report so we can understand how to change things."

The help and support of the Access Legal team has been hugely beneficial. Every one of the auditors has brought a constructive attitude towards trying to help us improve.

Recording compliance and managing risk with Access Legal Compliance

Making use of the Access Legal Risk and Compliance team for the firms file audit process has helped Acuity Law work more compliantly to build a culture of compliance. Their use of the Access Legal Compliance system has helped them record their compliance data more accurately and in a way that empowers them to take action on improving compliance across the firm.

"The compliance software is really the centrepiece, where we have everything recorded – undertakings, breaches, potential notifications to insurers, the gifts register and others. It’s genuinely a function we wouldn’t be able to operate without."

It’s very simple to use and the reporting generated is key to how we improve our compliance practices. Of course, you only get out, what you put in, but it’s become an ingrained piece of our software stack.

As holders of the Lexcel Practice Management Standard, having easy access to their compliance data is vital, so that when Lexcel perform an audit of the firm when it comes to reaccreditation, the data they need is available at their fingertips.

"Over the past year, the software has been perfect in enabling us to access the reports that Lexcel will need to audit, so it’s been very helpful on that front."

Being more compliant with Access Legal

Overall, Acuity Law has found great benefits by working with Access Legal to become more compliant, as Rob summarises:

We’ve seen a significant improvement in our client onboarding compliance through embedding areas picked up in audits into a more automated way of onboarding.

We can now report on areas highlighted in the audits with the Access Legal Compliance system to ensure all risk assessments have been done.

We have a new process which enables us to report matter risk assessments, which would have been a much more difficult and manual task before.

Overall, Access Legal has definitely fed into our thinking in terms of how to change processes to work in a more compliant way.

If you’d like to find out more about how our Risk and Compliance team can help you to become more compliant, visit our Risk and Compliance Services page here.