The IDR Law back story
Every law firm since COVID says they offer this don’t they? So why is IDR Law so different?
IDR Law was founded by our current CEO, Martin Holdsworth. Martin qualified as a solicitor in 1995, and he has been an equity partner in both small and medium sized law firms prior to IDR Law. Initially a family lawyer, then litigation/insolvency lawyer and finally in 2000 focussed on a growing caseload of contentious probate work.
In 2009, Martin’s wife Naomi (also a lawyer) had a brain stem stroke – at the time they had 4 children all aged under 7 years of age. Naomi made an amazing recovery over the months that followed but never returned to work. What they now call their “stroke of luck” resulted in them having to move home/schools to make life practically possible. Dropping from 2 salaries to 1 brought its own challenges but the lasting impact it had was the realisation that as lawyers they had become conditioned to the fact that career advancement was invariably based primarily on the ability to bill beyond annually increasing targets that could only be met by working longer hours.
Advancement also came/comes with the requirement to quickly become a business developer and/or an expert team manager and/or finance and data interpreter. All of these “value add” talents can only be learnt and mined through practice and in some cases external study. Martin found as others do still that the price of progression to the higher levels of a law firm comes at a direct cost to home life. Law may not be unique in this respect, but Martin was determined to create a law firm that enabled advancement by the legal and support teams on terms where everyone has an opportunity to succeed without it costing them more and more time away from their family.
IDR Law was founded in 2017 and is now a minority PE backed £3m+ turnover business, with over 20 specialist contentious probate lawyers.
From founding vision to a law firm championing a balanced home/work life. We are more than happy to expand on all of what IDR Law does but for now, here is a bullet pointed list:
The entire firm is fully employed.
There are no self-employed consultants, so everyone has the security of a full salary.
The firm is entirely paperless
From the outset (pre-COVID) everyone worked flexibly between home and the office.
No-one is required to work in the office for more than 3 days a week
Much less with seniority – trust based flexibility runs across the entire workforce.
Part time working is always available
As families arrive, invariably work/family balance is thrown askew – part time working is always available at any point in your time at IDR Law
As an autonomous senior lawyer (Associate and above) part-time working is always available
We work on 5 billable hours per day, so for example, if you are happy that 15 billable hours is possible (which as we all know is 21 hours in real time) then that equates to a 3 day salary but (a) those hours can be worked on any combination of days that work around your family life – those days/times can change day to day/week to week. Any hours worked beyond those agreed over a month are paid as overtime – no longer do part time lawyers end up working almost full time with a part time salary!
Everyone is discouraged from working more than 25 billable hours a week
Growth is achieved by bringing in new team members to deal with the volume of work over that required to get everyone to their agreed billable hours target.
Career advancement at IDR Law is not built on increasing billable hour targets for anyone.
This is one of the protected tenets of IDR Law and is supported by PE investors, BGF.
You can focus on billable case work
We have partitioned our Triage team away from our Legal team so lawyers looking to complete billable hours are saved from a large amount of client enquiries that will not turn into billable case work
IDR Law has a successful BD and marketing team that deals with all the B2B and B2C marketing
This means there is no onus on anyone else to have to carry out BD activities on top of fee earning targets. Events and functions can be attended but are entirely voluntary.
We have regular meetings with all our teams and review personalised personal development plans (PDPs)
These are a key way to ensure that life/work balance and what would look like success to everyone is known and explored.
Our maternity policy is stronger than most outside of Scandinavia!
Our Menopause policy and other health and wealth benefits are sector leading.
We celebrate an approach to human relations within the business that is fundamentally kind.
There is nothing weak in such an approach – we are an incredibly transparent firm with expectations of performance and behaviour that are fair but also clear – accountabilities are set against agreed job roles and targets- everyone is set up with the opportunity to succeed and support and guidance when needed.
Our Culture
At IDR Law, we want to ensure that our team feels seen and supported. Therefore, it is of paramount importance for us to build a workplace culture that allows our colleagues to get the most out of IDR and vice versa.
Each month, we open a conversation with the team and offer them the chance to voice their opinions on what they think IDR does best and what they feel would benefit our development.
Through this, we have development initiatives such as the opportunity to request working hours tailored to your family’s schedule, better office facilities, and even the chance to have more social events. We can proudly say that we received an exceptional employee satisfaction survey rating. We currently have a score of 9.2/10 on how likely the team would be to recommend IDR to a friend.
Our quarterly NPS Check Up:
Every quarter, we run an anonymous NPS survey across the entire firm to see how we are all doing against our vision.
IDR’s Family Flex Policy
IDR Partner and Head of Legal Operations Richard explains IDR’s family flex plan. At IDR Law, we don’t believe your career should be impacted by school runs or parent evenings; Richard details how tailoring your role around your family life means you really can have the best of both worlds.
Working from home/Hybrid working
Gloucestershire-based Paralegal Tim breaks down the work-life balance of IDR and how the opportunity to work from home has allowed him to live locally to where he grew up but also excel in his chosen career.
IDR’s Maternity Policy
Associate solicitor Kate discusses returning to work as a new mother and details IDR’s Maternity Policy. Kate also shares her experience of preparing for maternity leave and the support she received during her return to work.