Should we be placing more importance on helping to build the personal development skills of newly qualified solicitors?

Do you remember your first day as a newly qualified solicitor? I am assuming you can as we often remember the first day of a significant event. Did it include a bigger caseload, more responsibility, new expectations, a new secretary, greater targets, new colleagues and perhaps even a new suit?

Just as I remember my first day at primary school involved making a Humpty Dumpty collage with my teacher, I also remember my first day working as a newly qualified solicitor. I was certainly wearing a new suit and was no doubt hoping not to fall off the wall!

Qualifying as a solicitor is a significant event in someone’s legal career and requires personal development in many key areas including case management, client care, time management, decision making, practice development and building effective relationships. However, it can be a real challenge for newly qualified solicitors to remain focused on these areas. They lead busy lives and understandably often give priority to delivering their case load. However, underperforming in any of these key areas can result in stress and loss of productivity and motivation.

So should we be placing more importance on helping to build the confidence and personal development skills of our newly qualified solicitors?

Two emails which have landed in my inbox in the last few days suggest that we should. The first advertised an alumni career coaching service, which is being launched in association with a law college in response to an interest in one-to-one careers support and personal development services. The second advertised the Junior Lawyers Division’s Newly Qualified Solicitors Forum which is a one-day free skills event for newly qualified solicitors to equip them with the skills necessary for life in practice.

A career coaching service and a skills event are two fantastic resources which will help ensure our newly qualified solicitors develop into the best solicitors and stay sat on the wall!

I would be really interested to hear your comments and ideas.

www.tessaarmstrong.co.uk

Tags: Career, Careers, Coaching, Development, Law, Newly, Performance, Personal, Qualified, Solicitors, More…and

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Comment by Helen Upson on March 21, 2011 at 9:53: Excellent post and comments Tessa, I totally agree. I wish I'd had those emails as a NQ! No one can rely on "just" being a lawyer these days, we need to be be so much more. Not only for our clients but also our colleagues and the partners. My legal training was great but the personal development aspect was something which I've had to put a lot of hard work into myself. A bit (or indeed a lot) of guidance in the early days as a NQ could prove priceless in the long run and would do wonders for the NQ feeling valued in the organistation. Love your NQ's!

Comment by Scott Stemp on March 2, 2011 at 20:48: I think we should be investing in more training generally, not just for newly-qualified and certainly not only training for core legal skills. Mind you, it seems hard enough to convince some lawyers that training related to their core legal skills is required, let alone that their non-legal skills would benefit from training too.

Comment by Tessa Armstrong on March 1, 2011 at 16:44: Thanks Tom and Victoria for your comments. It is great to hear your agreement to investing in non-legal skill training and I hope there are many more who will agree to this as well!

Comment by Tom Kilroy on February 27, 2011 at 17:22: Tessa. This is a really useful post. The answer to the question you pose is "yes" of course we should invest more in training. I've been in house now for too long to qualify me to comment on law firms, but I can tell you that when I got one particularly significant promotion at GE, they sent me, over about 3 years, for 7 weeks of residential training, most of it in business skills, covering everything from managing a team to how how to drive profitability. I remain enormously grateful for that investment they made in me. That company is 330,000 people and $170 billion in revenue to they can run their own university. For those of us at businesses with less clout than that, we need to take advantage of all the excellent external courses out there. If we act like snooty lawyers and look down our noses at critical non-legal skills (I hate the word "soft"), we're sleepwalking. Nice post. Tom

Comment by Victoria Moffatt on February 24, 2011 at 13:59: Good post Tessa,

I think a lot depends on the firm. As anything in life, there are those that are happy and willing to invest in their NQ's and others who take them for granted. My view is, of course NQ's should be guided and invested in as they represent the future of the firm and even if not the firm, the profession.