Over to you: assessing your training need in the age of ‘continuing competence’

In October 2017, solicitors will make their first declaration that they have ‘reflected on and addressed any identified learning and development needs’. Continuing professional development (CPD) is the latest aspect of solicitors’ lives to convert to an outcomes-focused approach, under the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)’s continuing competence regime.

While the previous requirement to complete 16 hours of training had a certain virtue of simplicity and ease-of-proof, it was undoubtedly open to abuse. It is no urban myth that yawning personal injury lawyers could be found at the back of a conference room, catching up on the cricket while their property lawyer colleagues got stuck into the finer points of dealing with unregistered property.

In the new era of continuing competence, the power is in your hands. You decide what you want or need to learn, you decide how you will learn it most effectively, and you decide when you are ‘done’. Even better, the SRA’s competence statement gives the same emphasis to personal and management skills as it does to technical legal practice. Mark Prebble, mentor, coach and trainer of in-house lawyers, sees this as the ‘liberation’ of development: lawyers can dip into a topic for a basic orientation, then decide if further training would be helpful.

Good news so far for in-house lawyers. The flexibility of the new regime allows you to fit learning and development around a busy workload and use the method that suits you best. The scope of the competence statement acknowledges that developing strong negotiation skills, for example, is a legitimate learning goal for a lawyer.

The difficulties may be more logistical; with training budgets under pressure, some may have found it helpful to point to an explicit requirement for 16 hours of training. Now, it will be a case of making the argument based on the value it adds to the business.

There may also be practical difficulties in integrating or bolting on the SRA competence statement and approach to an organisation’s appraisal system. Appraisals may be structured around the operational requirements of the business and simply unsuitable for solicitors, without the space for either the specific competences or the reflective learning approach required by the SRA. In such cases, in-house lawyers face the prospect of diverging from their employer’s requirements to ensure they are meeting the requirements of their professional regulator.

Being pragmatic and taking a calculated risk are ultimately greater contributors to achieving the business’ objectives than a beautifully presented, multi-page advice paper.

To support lawyers under the continuing competence regime, tools have been developed to help reduce the administrative burden such as Central Law Training (CLT)’s free Competence Gateway. These tools can be an invaluable resource to easily log, reflect on and collate an up-to-date record of training, whatever form this training takes. Find out how the Competence Gateway can benefit you at www.competencegateway.com

Following its review of post-qualification training, the SRA is now in the process of overhauling the route to qualification. It is currently anticipated that the period of on-the-job learning, in place of the current training contract, could be fulfilled with shorter stints in more than one organisation. This could provide greater opportunities for pre-qualification exploration of in-house career paths.

Outcomes-focused regulation, in all its guises mentioned above, does have the benefit of acknowledging that a fast-increasing proportion of solicitors work in-house. The Law Society puts the current proportion of solicitors working in-house at 22% and anticipates this proportion having grown to 35% by 2020.

Popular technical training for in-house lawyers

90% of attendees at CLT’s contract law courses in 2016/17 were in-house lawyers

 

79% of attendees at CLT’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) conference in April 2017 were in-house lawyers.

The needs of solicitors working in-house, as outlined elsewhere in this magazine, are different to those working in law firms, so service providers such as CLT are developing products that support these different needs and ensure that relevant training is available to meet the requirements of the continuing competence regime.

The CLT website has a dedicated landing page which highlights training of particular interest to in-house lawyers, whether it is courses specifically designed for in-house lawyers or topics likely to be relevant to the workload of in-house counsel. Courses, conferences and webinars are all tagged with the relevant SRA competences, so you can identify the training that is most applicable to you.

While the law is the same whether you are practising it in-house or in private practice, the way in which legal knowledge is applied depends on whether your clients are external or internal. Chris Parr, a former in-house lawyer and new CLT trainer, highlights the need for commercial application of the law in-house: you cannot just say a deal cannot be done because of competition law; you need to present an alternative and be solution-oriented – while also having the credibility to say no when it is needed.

Development of personal skills therefore deserves a prominent role in training for in-house lawyers. Skills such as negotiation, resilience and emotional intelligence are important tools in the successful in-house lawyer’s armoury. ‘Commercial instinct’, as Parr puts it, is another. Understanding the business inside out, how it makes money and what makes it tick are at the heart of the legal team creating value for the business. Financial literacy and speaking the language of the business will be essential attributes.

Being pragmatic and taking a calculated risk are ultimately greater contributors to achieving the business’ objectives than a beautifully presented, multi-page advice paper.

Iain Larkins, also a former in-house lawyer and CLT trainer, gives the example of the difference between taking instructions and giving advice in-house versus in private practice. Instructions in-house can be as brief as a sticky note saying ‘Is this legal?’ on a stack of documents left on your desk, and advice needs to be snappy – possibly even delivered orally in the first instance. Being pragmatic and taking a calculated risk are ultimately greater contributors to achieving the business’ objectives than a beautifully presented, multi-page advice paper. Parr speaks of the need for lawyers working on either side of the table to be able to ‘translate “legal advice” into “company speak”’.

That is why CLT has developed management and skills courses specifically for solicitors working in-house in commercial enterprises. Designed and presented by trainers who have extensive in-house experience themselves, these courses get to the heart of the skills you need to be an effective partner to the business, whatever your level of experience. CLT also offers courses that will assist in-house lawyers confronted with legal issues that fall outside of their comfort zone or technical expertise.

There are a number of benefits to going external for training and development. One of the most significant is the opportunity to meet others in a similar role and gain insights into how other teams and enterprises operate. Identifying common challenges and different responses is invaluable peer-learning that can make you feel less alone in the role, and seeing things from an alternative perspective can have a rejuvenating impact. As Parr notes, there is huge value in the diversity of attendees and the deep knowledge of an experienced trainer: ‘a true technical expert can be a joy to listen to’. While there may be resistance to paying for external courses when free options are available, it is worth bearing in mind that free training does not generally come with no strings attached.

There are a number of benefits to going external for training and development.

For the ultimate in bespoke provision, organisations can select courses to run on their own premises, with their choice of trainer and the content tailored to their exact requirements. This can be cost-effective for even a small group, as travel costs are eliminated and less time is spent away from the coalface.

To find out more about how Central Law Training can help you keep up to date and develop your skills, visit www.clt.co.uk/in-house-counsel.