Matthew Moore is a senior partner at Gales Solicitors, a high-street legal firm in Bournemouth geared toward providing a high-quality service for individuals and families. Reflecting on his 20 years working in family law and dealing with legal aid and privately funded cases, Moore told The Leaders Council Podcast about his early experiences balancing routine legal work with his senior partnership responsibilities, and touches on the Covid-19 pandemic and how that has impacted Gales.
When taking on a leadership role within any organisation, the increased responsibility often requires a change of emphasis and mindset from the person stepping into the role. Recalling his personal experience of becoming a senior partner within Gales, Moore talked about his own need to adjust his outlook compared to when he was carrying out his customary legal work.
Moore said: “It's always tricky when you start in something like a law firm, because you get made a partner because you're a good lawyer. And then of course, you discover that you're now in a management role and of course you have no training for it. You may well be suited to the role, you may not. But it's a totally different job, and sometimes a totally different mindset to your sort of normal legal work is required. And that does take quite a while to adjust to for a lot of people. This certainly was the case for me.”
While Moore naturally grew into his more senior role over time as he gained more experience, he told of how he benefitted from working with a more experienced senior partner in the short-term who helped him as he was still learning.
“I did have the benefit of a senior partner with a lot of experience who kept us going at a time when I really wouldn't have had a clue what I was doing. So, there is the importance of that and having someone next to you.
“Certainly though, the longer you do it, the easier it becomes to recognise that ‘I've been through this before.’ So eventually I was able to say to myself: ‘I know how to deal with it. I know what I'm doing. I know what I did wrong last time. I'll do it slightly better this time.’”
When asked about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Gales’ work, Moore revealed that from his experience there had been an interesting phenomenon that legal cases were taking longer to resolve following the lockdowns than had been the case beforehand.
Moore elaborated: “It's quite interesting seeing the impact of Covid on our workload, and divorce work and family work are certainly seeing an impact. At the beginning of the lockdown, we had a lot of calls from people talking about problems with parent-child contacts and the issues with a child going between two households. So, there were a number of issues like that to start with. But as time has passed, we've had an increasing number of people coming through also where maybe two people in a couple have both started working from home post-pandemic, and that has led to a breakdown in the relationship.
“The psychological impact of the lockdown is particularly noticeable though in that the average individual we deal with is slightly more difficult to deal with than they were before Covid. On average, fewer cases are settling early and are having to go further down the process before reaching a resolution. You’re also getting more people presenting with stress than we used to. Of course, this is just our experience, and everybody has their own perspective, but it is still interesting.”
The full interview with Gales Solicitors’ Matthew Moore can be seen below.
