Any internal auditors on here?

[MinnieMountain]

I'm a legal auditor for a law firm. I'm trying to work out ways to improve our fee earners' internal audit scores by getting them to stop making the same mistakes repeatedly.

Can anyone give me advice on how to go about this please? Are there any change modes that work particularly well on lawyers?

I've only been auditing for 15 months (resi solicitor before that), so I'm new to all this.

The mistakes btw are things they should know, like saving all their paperwork to the file, adding all parties to the system etc.

You need to make this someone’s job. Ideally not the fee earner themselves who should just have to follow the process. Much of the failures I see are as a result of insufficient administrative assistance.

Parties, you shouldn’t be able to open up a file without detailing all of the parties (this is basic conflicts by the way). Email systems should flag when someone is emailed on a file number that hasn’t been included in the parties list. You shouldn’t be able to send out emails without allocating to a file number.

If you use imanage or similar saving correspondence to the file should be automatic. I would expect a trainee to save down documents, version up for changes, update documents lists and status reports etc without being asked - it’s basic stuff and the clear assumption should be that it just needs to be done. Your firm has probably bought the tech but needs people to actually use it as intended. Training is the way to bring this about and it is a matter of professional standards frankly.

No bonuses if people don’t follow the rules, eg at my firm you don’t qualify if you don’t close time quickly. Have your juniors (and seniors!) actually been taught why and how to do things the correct way.

Sorry, I should have added that they're all self-employed consultants. I realise that's key information when it comes to motivating them to change!

Some employ admin assistants, most don't.