Members

Ian Brodie is a specialist in helping professional service firms attract more clients and win more new business. He works with lawyers, accountants, consultants and other professionals to help them get more confident and capable at selling their services. He is the author of “What Makes a Rainmaker?” –  the research report into business development best practices for law firms. He publishes regular articles on business development and marketing for professional firms at www.ianbrodie.com (recently named as one of the “resources of the decade” for professional services marketing and business development by Raintoday.com), and is the North West Regional Director of the PM Forum (the association for marketers and business developers in professional service firms).

Adèle Warchester, qualified as a solicitor in 1977, and is the former client care, risk manager, and managing partner of a Manchester city centre practice.  She has extensive experience of private practice and implementing quality management systems.  She successfully took the firm through the franchise process, the Investors in People and Lexcel accreditations.  Now an independent Quality Management Consultant, she advises firms on all aspects of quality, professional compliance, and risk management.  She lectures widely to the profession and has contributed various articles on risk management to publications including the LMS Risk Management Toolkit.

Jayne Smith is Head of Operations of Document Direct, a professional business delivering outsourced transcription and translation services.  Jayne’s service has the benefit of her expertise and experience gained whilst working as IT trainer and manager of 24 hour word processing department of DLA piper’s Liverpool office. Whilst there she successfully delivered business re-engineering process to simply support work devices and to develop 24 hour remote secretarial services.  “Poacher turned gamekeeper” with 25+ years of legal support, secretarial and IT training experience from various legal firms she is uniquely placed to understand how to reduce the costs of support services.  Jayne’s own experience of training in advance word processing and implementing digital dictation systems has led to improved processes for her clients.

Ann Page is the founder of Beyond the Brief, a specialist business delivering strategic coaching, leadership; management and interpersonal skills training for the senior members (and those aspiring to be) of the legal profession. A former Top 100 Lawyer of the Year, with an impressive CV over a 30-year career as a senior in-house lawyer delivering first class legal services.  She holds an HNLP certificate in coaching as well as being a certified NLP Master Practitioner. Ann is uniquely qualified to offer such high quality training and coaching for lawyers, thanks to her combination of skill sets and a career background. She has wide knowledge of the issues facing the legal profession. She is a passionate, active participant in the changes affecting her professional body and proactively contributes to the future development and shape of things to come. Ann is Head of Business Affairs for the Institute of Paralegals and is active in her local and the national law society. She has written ‘Managing External Legal Resources’ for those that instruct private practice.

Gary heads the Professional Practices’ Team at Booth Ainsworth,  where he oversees the healthcare division and controls the legal team. Gary developed the Professional Practices team ten years ago and has since become synonymous in the North West for providing pro-active advice to law firms. In 2009 Gary won the coveted 20/20 Innovation award for ‘Marketing Person of the Year’ and regularly writes articles  for his own newsletter, Law News, plus Quills ‘Readit’ newsletter and also has had articles published in the Law Gazette. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1989 and has the knowledge and experience to meet the needs of professional organisations’ in the North West. A significant proportion of Gary’s portfolio consists of legal clients offering niche services through a general practice firm.

Gary offers advice on current best practice and performance measurement and also offers an exclusive Benchmarking Survey for Solicitors, available on request.