Co-op Legal – 2021 Interim Results colleague message from Caoilionn Hurley

I’m pleased that our legal services business has had a strong start to 2021. Despite the challenges we’ve faced through the continuing lockdown at the start of the year, external market pressures, and colleague recruitment our revenues and case numbers were up compared to 2020.

All our business areas performed well. Our Probate, Estate Planning and Family Law practice areas all grew in the first half of 2021. Following the sale of the insurance business we’ve continued to run down our small claims personal injury team which is being discontinued.

Our legal services colleagues have worked incredibly hard to achieve these numbers, we continue to face into a number of challenges and to be in this position at the half year point is down to the dedication and commitment of our teams.

Challenges in H1 of 2021

We’ve been working against a backdrop of a smaller wills market. Many people put a will in place last year, a trend accelerated by the pandemic, so this year has seen a smaller pool of people making wills. The furlough scheme, also led to a temporary increase in people choosing to go through the probate process without legal support as people have had more time and less income.

As we’ve grown the number of cases we’re working on, we’ve also had to recruit more colleagues to support this. At times, case load has been high for colleagues as we’ve waited for new starters to arrive or waited to recruit qualified professionals in a competitive market. I want to thank our teams who not only supported more cases but kept doing the right thing for clients and maintained our strong levels of client service.

We’re now starting to see some positives. We’re recruiting a new fast-track team, strong candidates have applied and I’m confident that a new and full capacity team will be up and running during Q4 2021. Although recently, our revenue and case management has been impacted by colleague numbers, I’m hopeful this will mean we’ll be on track and meet our targets and keep giving our clients a great service by the end of the year.

Building a digital law firm and working with partners

We launched more digital tools in H1, including a lasting power of attorney digital service and a digital probate administration service. These tools are another improvement for clients and will help them to understand the law and make informed decisions about products and services.

These tools also help us form new partnerships, as businesses in all kinds of sectors start to see the benefit they will give customers. In the first half of 2021, we signed up eight new partnerships, which included financial organisations like Elder, Openwork and Owl Financial and charities such as The RNLI and Amnesty International whose invaluable work is supported by money left in wills.

It’s not been an easy six months, but thanks to all our legal services colleagues it has been successful. We’ve still got challenges ahead and need to continue our levels of commitment, client service and innovation in the final months of the year. I know with the team I’ve got around me – they’ll do all this and more.

Thank you!

Caoilionn