Investing in training models for tomorrow

The new year often equals the perfect opportunity for reassessing where a business’ goals and objectives are headed. My firm has no need to reinvent itself, and giving the business a facelift certainly isn’t part of my remit as managing partner as we don’t need one. If anything, we have recently been looking at areas of the business where we might be able to build on, in particular developing our training and recruitment programme to encourage the next generation of legal talent into the profession.

Unemployment figures continue to be a topic of much debate, particularly in the North East of England, where we’re based – a region that is experiencing some of the lowest employment figures on an ongoing basis.

The legal profession is a tough enough one to crack without us helping pave the way for passionate learners. With traineeships becoming increasingly hard to come by, it baffles me why any organisation – within or outside of the legal profession – would undervalue investing in young talent. Having struggled initially myself to find a training contract, I know the true value of a law firm which offers a young person guidance and a career path.

The whole legal sector has gone through challenging times in recent years, making 2014 an ideal opportunity to bring in fresh perspective and energy.

Over the past few years we have committed to training and skills development, both internally and externally. How, you ask? Through a number of ways, and it hasn’t been a costly exercise. In fact we have reaped the benefits and gone on to employ some highly talented youngsters.

Alongside various apprenticeships running across our different departments, we have worked closely with a local high school to shape a unique internship which will add value to its courses and help students understand how businesses operate. The tailor-made internship provides a strong grounding in all areas of the business, within the law, marketing and HR departments, across two half days per week. This allows the intern to experience a real business environment while continuing their studies, and receiving a paid wage. The model has been a huge success to date and we’ll be looking to roll out it out into 2015 and beyond.

It’s paramount we, as a profession, start to take responsibility for ensuring the next generation of legal talent receives the best training and encouragement possible – not only for the sector but for the wider UK economy as a whole.

I am sure, and I hope, that there are law firms up and down the country looking to reassess their approach to training and recruitment as they move through 2014. Now we’re beginning to move out of the recession and budgets are becoming more accessible, we will hopefully see an increasing number of law firms investing
in the next generation of
talent. It has the potential to
be a really exciting time for the industry. Let’s make the most
of it.