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Why you’re going to need more than your law degree to be able to do your legal work effectively

Why you’re going to need more than your law degree to be able to do your legal work effectively

Freshly graduated lawyers & paralegals – don’t make the mistake of expecting that you’ll only need your law degree to be able to do your legal work effectively.

Because you’ll also have to deal with the practical side of working in a law firm.

Just ask someone who’s been admitted for 2-3 years (they’ll confirm that for you).

It can help if you think about it this way – there’s no point exceling in equitable principles if you mismanage documents, overlook important information or mess-up deadlines.

But senior lawyers are usually so busy that these essential basic skills can often get overlooked, taken for granted or pushed to one side while everyone deals with the pressure of more urgent matters. Practical skills can have as much impact on client files as your legal knowledge.

It can really help you to stay out of danger zones, if you remind yourself to pay attention to these key points:

1. Always be aware of due dates (so that you don’t miss them).

2. Make sure that you are using the correct versions of documents (not superseded drafts).

3. Don’t forget to keep senior lawyers updated about their matters (they need to know what’s happening).

As you can see, these are all extremely practical actions but these sorts of skills can have as much impact on client files as your legal knowledge (sometimes more).

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Practical Lawyer Skills Tips and Tricks

Susan Marie Hill

All the essential practical skills in one place

Accelerate Essential Legal Skills for Young Lawyers

The training is set up to start right from the very first day that a new lawyer joins your firm. Graduate lawyers are taught all the basic practical skills from the ground up, leaving senior lawyers free to focus on specific issues in individual supervision.

Why choose The New Lawyer Accelerator Program?

For senior lawyers with their own workload to manage, it can be to find time to properly train a graduate lawyer.

Instead of you having to provide training on the run, squeezing in time and dealing with whatever happens to come up, the New Lawyer Accelerator Program is set up to start right from the very first day that a new lawyer joins your firm.

Graduate lawyers are taught all the basic practical skills from the ground up, leaving senior lawyers free to focus on specific issues in individual supervision.

What skillsets are covered?

With The New Lawyer Accelerator Program, you’ve got the assurance of knowing that every minute of the program delivers the 3 R’s of effective practical training –it’s relevant, relatable and realistic.

Each topic has been carefully selected to match the requirements of entry-level lawyers.

The program answers the sorts of beginner questions that always come up for newly graduated lawyers. Things like:

How do you prepare a brief?
What information do you need to include in a time sheet?
Is there a way that you want all of these documents organised?
I’ve never taken a telephone inquiry before – what’s the best way of handling it?
Are there steps that I should be following to take instructions from clients?
You’ve asked me to arrange a conference – what do you want me to do?
Can you tell me what I’m supposed to do to prepare for this court appearance?

The program tells new lawyers everything they need to know all broken down into plain and simple language, with step-by-step explanations and easy-to follow, real-life examples.

How is the training delivered?

This comprehensive program delivers 20 hours of specialist training covering a full range of practical skills that have been especially selected to match the entry level of a new lawyer.

The idea is for your new lawyer to train for one hour a day, right from day one, and then to immediately apply what they’ve learnt as they go.

Video training modules guide graduates through a carefully structured training sequence as they’re shown how to do the typical ‘everyday’ tasks of a junior lawyer. Things like:

How to complete time sheets correctly; keeping track of billable hours & budgets
The process to follow for preparing a brief to a barrister
Organising, preparing for and attending meetings and conferences
Opening and closing client files; taking files home; using original documents
Practical tips for preparing for a court appearance or instructing a barrister in court
How to handle telephone inquiries; taking instructions; communicating with clients
Prioritising workload demands; how to organize information; working on your own

Each module is packed full with straightforward explanations, real-life examples and practical tips as your new lawyer is guided, step-by-step through these essential basic skillsets.

Plus there are quizzes, checklists, precedents, guides, summaries and more to reinforce everything that’s learnt, so that graduates have the tools they’ll need to be able to perform at their best in your practice efficiently and effectively from the very start.

Why choose The New Lawyer Accelerator Program?

What makes this program so different from anything else available is that it provides a complete induction package that comprehensively covers all of the essential basic skills for new lawyers in one place.

Which means that, rather than having to rely on random sessions, this is a specialised, structured, step-by-step program that’s totally focused on the daily practical skills that a new lawyer needs to learn if you want them to be able to perform productively.

The training course is designed, created and presented by Susan Marie Hill, author of the groundbreaking legal practical skills handbook specifically written for graduate lawyers A New Lawyer’s Guide to Getting it Right the First Time (LexisNexis). A lawyer herself for more than 35 years, Susan is also a qualified coach. After all those years, she realised that there was a significant training gap around basic practical skills for new lawyers.

Her answer was to formulate this cutting-edge program to provide an effective, accessible ‘hands-on’ solution that would deliver this much-needed training in an easy-to-understand format, all in one place.

The New Lawyer Accelerator Program is your opportunity to deliver practical, hands-on training in these essential everyday practical legal skills so that new lawyers have the tools they need to be able to do their work productively and effectively, right from day one.

Lighten your training workload

If you’re a senior practitioner who’s already stretched to the limit, then you know how hard it can be to find time to properly train a graduate lawyer. With your own workload demands to manage, senior lawyers usually have little option other than training on the run, squeezing in time and dealing with whatever happens to come up.

But that’s all about to get a whole lot easier with The New Lawyer Accelerator Program.

It’s a comprehensive training course that covers the essential basics.

The program delivers a guaranteed win/win for everyone involved because:

when junior lawyers receive basic skills training it means that errors are reduced, productivity improves, and overall performance levels are lifted

and, at the same time

senior lawyers can streamline supervision sessions to suit specific individual issues because the beginner basics are covered by the program.

Designed to accelerate, systemise and simplify the learning curve, it teaches new lawyers all the practical beginner skills that they’ll need to know from day one. By breaking skillsets down, piece by piece, and explaining one step after the other, it means that everything is easy for new lawyers to understand and follow so that they can immediately apply what they learn to their own files.

The course guides graduates through a carefully structured training sequence as they’re shown how to do the typical ‘everyday’ tasks of a junior lawyer. Things like:

How to complete time sheets correctly; keeping track of billable hours & budgets
The process to follow for preparing a brief to a barrister
Organising, preparing for and attending meetings and conferences
Opening and closing client files; taking files home; using original documents
Practical tips for preparing for a court appearance or instructing a barrister in court
How to handle telephone inquiries; taking instructions; communicating with clients
Prioritising workload demands; how to organize information; working on your own

Lack of experience means that until new starters have been trained in these sorts of essential practical skills, learning curve drags on, mistakes are made, and progress is slow. But in amongst all the demands of a busy legal practice, these bottom-line basics can easily be overlooked, forgotten or pushed down the list because there just aren’t enough hours in your day.

The New Lawyer Accelerator Program is your opportunity to deliver practical, hands-on training in these essential everyday practical legal skills so that new lawyers have the tools they need to be able to do their work productively and effectively, right from day one.

Easy to understand and apply

Using real-life situations to demonstrate practical skills with easy-to-follow examples and step-by-step instructions makes it easy for junior lawyers to immediately begin to apply proven techniques in their own work.

You can give new lawyers – and your firm - a big advantage, because with the specialised New Lawyer Accelerator Program training, they’ll have the opportunity to accelerate their way through the unavoidable learning curve phase.

The New Lawyer Accelerator Program has been especially designed for new graduates to make the transition from student academic studies to real-life lawyer easier, faster and more efficient.

It offers a unique concept in practical legal skills training, because it covers all of the essential beginner skills in one complete integrated program.

The program adopts a down-to-earth, ‘hands on’ approach to legal practical skills, with a ‘no frills’ system of training that gets right down to the basics, so that even the most recent graduate can apply what they’ve learnt as they go.

Structured in a clear, plain and simple format that’s intended for use by new lawyers from their very first day at your law firm, each training module features a specific set of practical skills.

There’s an emphasis on using everyday situations as examples which are broken down with step-by-step explanations. To make it even easier, all strategies, checklists and guidelines can be downloaded for easy reference - there’s 100+ templates packed with helpful tools like ‘Five Focus Factors for Effective File Management’, ‘Your 3-phase System for Professional Telephone Inquiries’ and ‘Top Preparation Priorities for Meetings & Conferences’. They’re supplemented by a set of practical Top Ten Tips for each module to reinforce all of the key points.

Plus, new lawyers can test out their new skills with a 20 question, multiple choice Quick Quiz for each training module.

It goes without saying that such a course must be generic, but the typical tasks that have been selected generally apply across the board, no matter what sort of legal work you’re doing. Which means that you can feel sure that your new lawyers will be receiving relevant top quality training that’s matched to their entry level skillset.

This dynamic combination of real-life examples, easy-to-follow explanations and step-by-step instructions means that new lawyers have an unbeatable opportunity to learn professional practical skills more effectively than ever before as they fast-track their way through the learning curve phase.

Start hands-on training straightaway with no downtime

Time pressures on supervising solicitors are intense. Reduce the time you need to spend on teaching basic practical skills with this unique, accessible on-demand training for brand new lawyers.

Long-term solicitors know that it’s usually the absence of everyday practical skills that takes up a lot of early training time for new lawyers. Because without any experience, although they might understand what you want them to, they don’t know how to actually do it.

But when you’re a supervising solicitor working under time pressures, you’re not likely to have the luxury of being able to dedicate yourself to intensive instruction sessions where you break every step down, piece by piece, and deconstruct a process whenever another question comes up.

Which is where The New Lawyer Accelerator Program comes in.

It lets you begin filling that gap straightaway, with specialist training that covers a full range of practical skills, all especially selected to match the entry level of a new lawyer.

It’s been designed by Susan Marie Hill, a lawyer with more than 35 years’ experience and a qualified coach. She’s also the author of the popular LexisNexis book: ‘A New Lawyer’s Guide to Getting it Right the First Time’, a practical skills training manual specifically written for brand new lawyers.

Which means that you can feel totally confident that your new lawyer will be receiving the very best standard of basic practical skills training possible.

This comprehensive program delivers 20 hours of specialist training. Which means that, with the basics covered, as well as improved performance for graduates, your supervision time will be freed up to focus on specific individual issues.

Designed to start right from their first day, the program is focused on typical tasks undertaken by new lawyers. It teaches them practical skills that can be implemented by them straight away in their daily work so that they reduce errors, improve their performance and need to ask you less questions about basic day-to-day actions.

With the training assistance that you’ll receive from the New Lawyer Accelerator Program, you’ll have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that the junior lawyers who join your team will be on a fast-track to proficiency in practical legal skills right from the very start.