Careers at Onyx Legal

It is important to us that your worklife supports your lifestyle and not the other way around. We have the capacity for wholly remote working, part time work, and a mixture of both. At present we have a mixture of wholly remote and in-office workers, with the aim that everyone works from home on a Friday. Provided we have enough hands on deck to keep getting the work out the door, we are also happy for you to take unpaid leave in addition to your annual leave and spend more time with your family.

We’re interested! In commercial services, your practical experience (even raising kids) outside legal practice can help you to craft more well rounded and helpful advice for our clients, as well as being able to relate to the circumstances they are facing. Everyone has challenges and our clients appreciate it when we remember they are people too, not just business people.

• Quiet competence. It is quite stunning to employ someone who does not need to be told something twice and constantly applies their new learnings and builds on their experience as if that is just what everyone does. We love to see you develop and succeed.
• Self awareness. None of us are perfect. Owning your own failings and acknowledging and building on your strengths are qualities we admire. Our team meetings include discussions around personal challenges, development and successes as well as workflows.
• Problem solving – If you make a mistake, own it, find the solution and move on. If a client presents a scenario you don’t know how to address, brainstorm it with the team. We are interested in people who can look for the way forward rather than being stopped by an issue.

We’re proud of our alumni and have been told they feel they would not be where they are now without us. When you’re a fit, you’re a fit and we tend to keep our people for years. We like to keep in touch.

One former team member is now General Counsel in a billion dollar finance company, another is an Associate in Mergers and Acquisitions in an international firm and another moved to become a Claims Consultant with a top insurer.  

We use the Smokeball practice management system and operate cloud-based and paperless, so you need to be able to get a pretty good understanding of our systems fairly quickly to be an effective team member. We do have a library of standard operating procedures, so there are lots of ‘how to’ guides to refer to, but equally, it is important that you complete all the training and promptly ask for support if you can’t work something out.

No. We are more impressed with a background in small business ownership or management than we are in top academic results. We want you to be able to give practical and considered advice to clients.

Your required billables are 2.5 – 3 hours per work day. We think this is a realistic and achievable expectation given the industry average is higher. 

The beauty of a commercial practice is that it isn’t always important to complete the work in business hours. If there is an issue with children (forgotten lunch/ uniform/ shoes/ assignments or accidents/ illness etc) then we understand that you aren’t going to be focused on what you are doing until after you’ve had the opportunity to sort that out. The same applies to anyone who is a carer, whomever it is they are caring for. Go, do.

You are an adult. Get the work done when you can do it in a focused way.

Let’s be frank, we can’t compete with city firms on wages.

We offer real team work, flexibility and a place where you enjoy coming to work (even if that means staying at home). If you are interested in business development we can also discuss how you can be paid as a percentage of what you bring in rather than a fixed wage, or in addition to a base wage. We’re happy to have a conversation to find out what might be mutually suitable.

We also offer incentives calculated on your team’s performance, which are assessed annually and payable after your team has recorded more than 115% of billable hours. 

• Negative attitude. If you were sacked or unsuccessful at something, so what, it happens. If you blame everyone else for that happening then we assume you have zero insight and we don’t want you in our team.
• Lack of respect. We are not here to pay you to learn how to run a successful law firm. If you have an interest in running your own business in the future, let us know. There may be opportunties for you here.
• Arrogance. We expect you to be able to relate to our clients as people, not just clients. On the whole, they have zero tolerance for being talked down to, so do we.