The North/South Divide

There was a time…a time of snow and dragons…when the North/South divide resembled the wall in Game of Thrones. No one ventured north of it for fear of encountering barbarian hordes and dark magic.

Cashroom always took the view that, being remote from all of our clients, such thoughts were nonsense. We found that in fact the cost efficiencies for law firms in the South when using our services were even more substantial and our clients were prepared to overlook possible wolves and polar bears- they knew we could deal with such horrors.

Post Covid of course, the world changed.

There were tech advances enabling online meetings, with cloud-based systems becoming more frequently adopted, and with them a greater readiness to use process and technology-based solutions that were, by their very nature, geography agnostic.

Cashroom had always been remote from our clients and now we were remote from each other. It was a liberation in many respects- a person’s location was no longer as relevant as their skill set. The legal sector was going through a seismic shift of attitude.

Law firms in the South found that their people were tempted by the idea of London wages but with no commute, as their employees worked from home. It also meant that firms could employ very high quality people from other parts of the country who would not have been prepared to move to the south.

Once the covid restrictions were lifted many firms continued to battle with the conundrum – how do they balance the benefits of a hybrid working model with the issues it creates over staff retention, culture and cohesive team working?

A few years on and the market is still figuring it out. Some are insisting that people are in the office every day- and they may lose staff as a result. The assessment of the approach required and the outcome will be different for every firm, no matter what location.

We have seen a definite shift to firms outsourcing supporting resource such as their finance function. Cashroom has just had a record month of signing new clients, and a key theme is that many firms now, when faced with a retiring or departing cashier, consider outsourcing as the best solution. The fact that we are from the grim north doesn’t feature. They want the best, most resilient service, the most talented and expert supplier, and their customer experience bears no relation to where we are based.

Of course when I’m on Teams calls to exotically located firms (Brighton or Guildford perhaps!) the only clue to my location is the thick woolly jumper I’ll be wearing in the height of summer…and in the background the distant howl of some beast or other.