Oerton Simm Celebrate 10 Years in Practice

It seems like it was only yesterday that we were wrangling with the council over window signage and querying why our phone provider had inexplicably removed thousands of pounds from our office account for a system that they had not actually installed. They also kindly, without warning, decided to change our allocated phone number within days of us having ordered around 10,000 printed letterheads! Letterheads? Well, that does tell you how long we have been kicking around. A piece of headed Solicitor’s paper is a dying breed now, taken over by stylishly designed email and digital letters.

Starting any business is a brave step (you could read that as a euphemism for mad) and it’s a pretty steep learning curve. We opened the firm with no clients and we patiently waited with nothing in our filing cabinets other than our packed lunches, hopefully twiddling our thumbs whilst waiting for the phone to ring whilst praying that we had actually advertised the correct telephone number.

Slowly, but surely, clients found their way to us and our reputation spread. We have been busily working away at 10 The Crescent since January 2013. When we thought about putting together this blog about our first 10 years we wondered whether much had actually happened but of course our industry has experienced an incredible number of changes over that period and, arguably, family law has undergone a transformation since we first opened our doors 10 years ago.

Family law procedures have shifted constantly over the decade. It seems almost inconceivable that in 2013 we were popping over the road to Taunton County Court to issue a paper divorce petition over the counter at the court office. Fast forward to now and of course we now no longer use the County Court but instead refer to the Family Court. The documentation and terminology has completely changed and not least the old ‘fault-based’ system was eventually done away with and by April 2022 we moved into the era of ‘no-fault’ divorce, issued via an application through an online portal to be processed centrally.

Much of the evolution in our working practices have been brought about the pandemic which forced our fairly traditional and conservative profession kicking and screaming into the digital age. Well, perhaps kicking and screaming might be a bit much perhaps sweating and whimpering a bit whilst we tore our hair out over digital bundles and MS Teams court hearings. But, as with all things, we adapt quickly and we soon forget that we did it any other way, having initially sworn ‘this will never, ever work!’

On reflection our small, niche, expert firm has allowed us to be adaptable, fast-thinking and fleet of foot. It has allowed us to pre-empt and react to change enabling us to navigate the ever-changing family legal landscape and in no small part supported by (and generally kept in check by) our wonderful assistant Laura Rigby who joined us in 2018. She is a huge asset to our team appreciated as much by us as our clients for her kindness, patience and efficiency. If only we had had her from day one. Perhaps we would not have been manually feeding letterhead into the printer, ‘Laura, what do you mean we can program the printer trays so it automatically prints letterhead from tray 2?!’ How things have changed.

We are excited to see what the next 10 years might bring. Thank you to all our clients, professional contacts and colleagues for their continued support.

Victoria, Graham, Laura and Len (the Jack Russell).

p.s Len still barks at the window cleaner, Andy, despite him having routinely cleaned our office windows for a decade. Some things just never change.