Jo Purdy

Background

About Jo Purdy

At Addleshaw Goddard (AG), I am a Senior Manager responsible for the management, resourcing and development of the Paralegals and Apprentices aligned to the Corporate & Commercial (C&C) Division of the Transaction Services Team (TST). My role is varied - I manage the performance of team members, resource projects and allocate work, and engage with the stakeholders in the business to grow the work done by the team. I also take a lead on recruitment for the TST, coach and mentor paralegals and managers, run training on various topics and continually look to develop my skillset and that of others.From prior personal and professional experience, I have a particular interest in mental health and run training for new joiners and for more experienced team members on how to spot signs, what to do if someone reaches out to you and the wealth of resources offered by the Firm to support its employees. I'm also a Mental Health Champion and have received training from Mental Health First Aid England to develop my listening and decision making skills. I lead on Paralegal and Apprentice recruitment for AG, bringing new team members into the business. Most recently, I led a team to develop an anonymised screening process to increase the diversity of the candidates we onboard and to make a process that is fair and inclusive for anyone who wishes to apply. I actively manage each vacancy across the team, bringing candidates through our screening process and into the business via our comprehensive induction program. I was shortlisted for the Manager of the Year Award at the Made in Manchester Awards 2022, which celebrates the best of Manchester’s young talent, which I'm extremely honoured to have been shortlisted for.Launched in 2010, the TST is a pioneering response to market pressure for more efficient and imaginative ways of resourcing client assignments. The TST is primarily a centralised unit, including paralegals and managers delivering more for less by providing a wide range of routine legal assignments, in either a stand-alone or an integrated way alongside AG's lawyers, and increasingly part of clients' own internal teams. The expansion of this team reflects not just the operational efficiency of our approach, but our determination to deliver better for clients, increase the quality of our work and create an environment which is attractive to the very best people. The TST is an alternative, more efficient approach to the the conventional delivery of standardised processes and the first on-shore operation of its kind offered by any UK law firm.