Business Partnering Skills for Lawyers

SRA Competence

A, C, D

Overview

Lawyers are under ever increasing pressure to provide exceptional value to their clients and organisations. In short, delivering more for less.

Fast paced, highly competitive environments, technological advances and disruptive thinking introduce new challenges that lawyers are expected to rise to. It is no longer sufficient to be technically proficient - whether you’re practicing in a law firm or an in-house legal department, to excel you must be an all-round strategic business adviser.

Effective business partners truly align themselves with the needs of the business or client. They anticipate requirements, build strong business relationships and have influence at a strategic level, all of which ultimately translates into more successful outcomes for clients and organisations alike.

The concept of Business Partnering has been utilised by finance professionals to add value for many years but is still is still in its infancy for the providers of legal services. This practical and interactive one-day course provides a detailed guide to business partnering best practice through examples, case studies and contemporary insights. The course is designed to help law firm professionals and in-house lawyers understand and overcome the barriers to business partnering and to learn how build and implement a successful business partnering programme.

Venue may change up to 14-days before the course start date. Enquire for dates.

The course topics and learning objectives include:

• What does business partnering mean in practice for law firms and business organisations?
• Understanding the business or client – strategic aims, operational considerations, commercial awareness
• Aligning your strategic goals and objectives to those of your clients/stakeholders
• Analyse the key differences between business partnering and key account management programmes
• Learn how to anticipate and overcome the barriers to building a successful business partnering programme
• Understand how to effectively work business partnering into the working day
• Learn how to instil the key qualities of an effective business partner into your team
• Developing relationships, building trust and influencing your client
• Business partnering for smaller firms and sole practitioners
• Key ingredients of an effective business partnering programme
• Understand how to measure the effectiveness of a business partnering programme

Under the SRA’s new approach to continuing competence, solicitors are expected to use the Statement of Solicitor Competence to identify and address their learning and development needs. The competence statement requires the following competencies:

• A - Ethics, professionalism and judgement
• B - Technical legal practice
• C - Working with other people
• D - Managing themselves and their own work

Senior lawyers (both in-house and private practice), legal business development professionals and law firm CEOs and COOs.