Law firm, barristers’ chambers, inhouse legal counsel - learning and development, coaching, consulting
Law firms are increasingly asking us to facilitate post-transaction reviews (PTRs) for them. Here’s how PTRs work
At its simplest a PTR is an internal meeting involving everyone from the law firm who worked on the transaction (“everyone” because some of the best learning points can come from support staff in terms of client handling and service delivery). Continue reading ‘Post-transaction reviews’
One of the major challenges facing the leaders of in-house legal departments is how to convince senior business leaders that the legal function adds value
Traditional financial measures provide very limited insight into how successful a legal department is or has been. Outside legal expenses will be significantly affected by external events and levels of activity over which the in house lawyers have limited influence. This often means that year-end discussions over performance tend to fall back into war stories about acquisitions completed against a tight time deadline, new products launched and media crises averted.
This approach is too hit and miss.
Continue reading ‘Establishing the value of the in house legal department’
What’s the difference between ‘coaching’ and ‘mentoring’ and what is a ‘non-directive’ style – and what do these things actually achieve?
Many of you reading this will know something about coaching or be interested enough to want to know more. You may not, however, be familiar with or may have been confused by, some of the principles (and accompanying jargon) of coaching.
Visualisation is advocated by sports psychologists. But what is it and does it work in a business / legal context?
In sports psychology, extensive use is made of the technique of visualisation for success. Successful sportsmen and women often prepare for their greatest tests by using powerful visualisation exercises to see themselves crossing the line first or putting on the green jacket of achievement.
Considerable research has been carried out to show the effects of such exercises in a range of contexts. In medicine, for example, patients in drugs trials have demonstrated improved effects after using visualisation. Continue reading ‘Visualisation - a useful technique for creating success’
Firms of all sizes are creating competitive advantage by building distinctive areas of expertise. But many of these efforts are less successful than they should be
Most firms we know are trying to build at least one stronger practice group.
You have seen books with titles like The Twenty Minute MBA. But we all know that, in the real world, running a successful law firm is not something you can learn from reading a book, still less from an article as short as this one. So what am I going to cover in so short a space that’s worth your time to read it?
I will take the quickest of lightning tours around seven areas of law firm management, pointing out one or two suggestions about each. Continue reading ‘Seven essentials of successful law firm management’
Where is your firm on the training / learning and development ladder?
As one of the consulting businesses designing and delivering programmes for different types of law firms, we decided to practise what we preach and review the market for this service. Our initial review showed conflicting trends in the legal market, so we carried out a more rigorous study and discovered that law firms were at different stages of evolution regarding training strategies. Continue reading ‘Training strategies in transit’
