Law Firm Operations
How to offboard a departing staff member without losing operational knowledge
Offboarding usually covers access and the laptop. It should also cover ownership, supplier relationships and the reasoning behind past decisions.
Most firms have an offboarding process. It usually covers the laptop, the email account and the building fob — and stops there.
Before the last day: capture what they know
This is the part that can't be done afterwards.
- For every system or supplier they own: why we use it, what to watch, who to call
- Any informal arrangement with a supplier that isn't in the contract
- Workarounds and manual steps they perform that nobody else does
- In-flight negotiations or unresolved issues
- Where their working documents live
Reassign ownership formally
Every system, supplier and contract they own needs a new named owner recorded before they leave — not "the practice manager will pick it up". Unowned entries are how renewals get missed six months later.
Hand over supplier relationships
Email each critical supplier contact introducing the new owner by name, with the departing person copied. It takes ten minutes and prevents a year of "I usually deal with…".
Revoke access cleanly — without erasing history
Access should be removed on the last day: identity and email, practice management, document management, accounting and trust systems, any standalone tools, MFA devices, shared credentials, building access.
Deleting the person from your operational systems is a different thing, and usually the wrong move. You still want to know who owned what, who approved a renewal in 2024, and why. AvenorOps takes the same approach: departing users are deactivated rather than deleted, so access stops immediately while ownership and decision history stay intact.
After they've gone
- Reclaim licences and seats — unused licences are the most common quiet cost
- Check nothing critical routes to their personal mailbox
- Rotate any shared credentials they held
- Confirm the register shows no unowned systems or suppliers
The shortcut
If ownership, renewal dates and decision history already live in a shared register, offboarding is a reassignment exercise rather than an investigation. That's the whole argument for keeping one — see AvenorOps.