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Negotiation skills at BPP with Jennifer MacKay
Jennifer McKay came to the BPP Business School to discuss with current BPP students in law, finance, business and accounting ‘negotiation skills’ in a very useful yet practical workshop. Jennifer is part of ‘Jump‘,
jump is a communications training and development consultancy specialising in pitching, public speaking, communication skills and team communication
Negotiation is pivotal for business transactions, including those with commercial lawyers. It is now thought that everything is negotiable and every negotiation is unique. Learning the basic process of negotiation and the theory behind it will provide a strong foundation from which to develop your skills as a negotiator. I found the two-hour workshop useful, as Jennifer explained clearly the background preparation work that was essential for any commercial negotiation to work, before supervising us doing structured role-plays where we’d have to reconcile the gap between expectation and reality. I’d strongly recommend this type of workshop for anyone interested in commercial transactions, whether from businessman or a lawyer perspective.
LegalAware campaign poster
This is our new campaign poster.
Hope you like it!
You can download it [poster made available to download].
Compass Good Banking Forum: building a banking system that is safe and secure
This was discussed at today’s Compass conference at the Institute of Education, Bedford Way.
SPEAKERS: Catherine Howarth, Fair Pensions (The Campaign for Responsible Investment);
Lindsay Mackie, Post Bank Campaign;
Mel Evans, PLATFORM;
Gavin Hayes, Compass (chair)
The Good Banking Forum is a new project by the New Economics Foundation and Compass to aspire to a safe and secure banking system. The Forum argues that the English banking system remains unreformed, despite a bailout of £850 bn in this country alone, and adopts a mantra of ‘business as usual’.
The New Economics website provide the following:
Approaching the third anniversary of the financial crisis, the banks remain unreformed. Bonuses are back, and little of the public money used to bail out the banks has resurfaced to help people and businesses, while investigations like the Independent Commission on Banking seem to be making little headway against a powerful banking lobby.
Banking is no longer serving the needs of people or the useful economy. It also finances environmental destruction by investing in things like the dirtiest fossil fuels. Unless we change the way that we organise banking, the economy too will collapse, with all of the additional environmental and social damage that entails.
We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shake-up finance in the UK making banks serve the needs of people, business and the planet rather than provide short-term gains for shareholders and profits for themselves. Although there seems to be little government appetite for serious reform of any kind, the tide of public opinion is shifting. Even the Governor of the Bank of England is calling for fundamental reform. This seminar outlines what needs to be done to build a banking system that is safe and fit for purpose.
Like the Independent Banking Commission (“IBC”), the Forum provides that there must be a proper separation between the investment and retail sectors, but instead they that Vickers and Osborne has not gone far enough. The Forum has indeed started work to map out what a good banking system might look like, and one of the outcomes of their Summit will be to make submissions to Sir John Vickers’ Independent Banking Commission.
The final IBC report will be in published in September, looking at competition and stability. Lindsay Mackie argued that the notion of privatised gains and socialist losses poses problems for the free market, a so-called “the moral hazard” argument. The “too big to fail” argument leads to the “too big to fail subsidy” phenomenon; the Banks can borrow money at very low interest rates, unfairly inflating their profits (cf. aerospace and defence), which is inherently anti-competitive (for example, compared to building societies which are unable to benefit from such subsidies). This can act as a barrier to entry for new organisations, additionally, as they cannot compete. The risks are transferred to the State, indirectly pushing up the costs of Government borrowing. The Vickers Commission agree this is a problem, and consider that ‘ringfencing’ is the problem; the investment bank cannot run the retail bank into the ground. The two problems are that it does not get rid of the ‘too big to fail’ problem, and, because of the Government deposit guarantee scheme, retailing banking is partially underwritten and subsidized (which arguably should not be a function of the State).
Mel Evans from PLATFORM proposed that the bailout of RBS provided no stipulations of what they should finance following recapitalisation. “Green groups to sue Treasury on RBS investments” appeared in the FT in 2009 – just months before climate change talks in Copenhagen, arguing that the (previous) Government should not paying to further more fossil fuel benefits. The Treasury argued that it needed to take an arm’s length approach to tackling RBS, but it could have been more interventionist in taking the bonuses. Arguably, there needs to be a ‘transformational change’. In August 2010, the Sunday Herald ran a headline saying “RBS: £13 bn funding to companies blamed for global warming”, so PLATFORM argue a ‘21st Century Breakthrough’ idea. Evans argues that the return on taxpayers’ money would be best served by taking their policy out of fossil fuels such that there should be greater convergence of banking regulation and green agendas. PLATFORM argue that any publically-funded investment bank should not provide continued support for fossil fuels, as this undermines green investment.
Catherine Howarth, CEO of ‘FairPensions”, argued that through pension funds we are all stakeholders in large corporates. Howarth feels that, if we are financing large fossil-fuel extraction activities, we may be compromising our future quality-of-life. These tensions in finance capital require a sophisticated analysis by fund managers; fund managers therefore are acting in a self-serving way earning themselves vast fees in bonuses, instead. People will be auto-enrolled into a pension scheme from next year, meaning from next year we will all be participating in capital markets. “Fair Pensions” currently campaign for responsible investment.
FairPensions grew out of a highly successful university-based campaign in the late 1990s which saw academics and students work together to transform the investment policy of theUniversity Superannuation Scheme (USS). The Ethics for USS campaign engaged thousands of academics and administrators at Universities and Colleges across the UK.
As a result of the campaign, the USS, then the 3rd largest occupational fund in the UK, formally adopted a socially responsible and sustainable investment policy, taking the crucial step of hiring staff to ensure the policy was properly enacted. The USS has remained a national leader in responsible investment ever since.
“FairPensions” provides online tools through a portal (fairpensions.org.uk), so – in theory – you can gain control of your pension fund.
BPP Legal Awareness Society: A burger business lunch
We met up this afternoon at Gourmet Kitchen Burger at Belsize Park to discuss our student society at BPP.
We felt that we enjoyed the Twitter thread enormously (‘@legalaware’), as we had a lot of really nice genuine conversations with like-minded people. The Twitter thread and this blog are very successful.
We also considered how we wished to get the most of our meetings for all students at BPP. We wished to involve more the marketing and finance students also at BPP Business School, though our meetings are open to all students (of all disciplines) at BPP. We have to ensure that we are able to invite interesting people to our meetings, without giving any undue favouritism to any invited guest.
Of course, we paid for our own burgers and Coca Cola!
Reform of legal aid in England and Wales: the Government response, June 2011
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
This is what two of the broadsheets said today.
The vital advice provided by these specialists in social welfare law has helped many of the families and individuals that I see to avoid costly litigation and prevent or mitigate the effects of marital and family breakdown.
Over 650,000 people, at recent estimates, and half a million according to the Ministry of Justice’s own impact assessment, will lose out on this vital help through changes to legal aid alone, at a time where other funding streams for free advice have already been cut or are under threat. About 6,500 social welfare law cases will no longer be funded in Birmingham. Liverpool will see about 9,800 cases cut. Each of these represents a loss of specialist help at a time when it is most needed.
Legal aid funding is being withdrawn from all employment advice, all welfare benefits advice and virtually all debt advice, nearly half of housing advice and nearly all of education advice. There can only be one outcome: avoidable poverty and distress for many thousands of people.
Not only will people be less likely to receive advice, but advice will be harder to find as agencies currently funded through legal aid find it more and more difficult to carry on. For example, the average impact on individual, not-for-profit providers of the cuts being proposed will be a 92% drop in income from legal aid.
Wesley Johnson in the Independent:
Vast swathes of the British population will be barred from accessing publicly-funded legal advice and representation following Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke’s decision to press ahead with reforms, campaigners said.
Legal aid “will no longer routinely be available for most private family law cases, clinical negligence, employment, immigration, some debt and housing issues, some education cases, and welfare benefits”, Mr Clarke said.
The moves will put publicly-funded legal advice and representation “beyond the reach of vast swathes of the British population”, the civil rights group Liberty said.
Mr Clarke said they will still be able to use “alternative, less adversarial means of resolving their problems” and insisted that “fundamental rights to access to justice will be protected”.
But Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said the moves were a “slap in the face” for “ordinary families, children and the disabled”.
Overcoming 'the Silo Effect': a new initiative at BPP
This article was first published here on ‘Business Because’.
From my own personal experience, having several different complementary disciplines at postgraduate level, I know that education suffers from the ‘Silo Effect’. Put simply, this describes an attitude found in some organizations that occurs when several departments or groups do not want to share information or knowledge with other individuals in the same company. A silo mentality reduces efficiency and leads to poor cooperation and communications, and can be a contributing factor to a failing corporate culture. Contemporary management views suggest that the silo mentality mindset must be broken in order for employees to remain motivated and be happy to come to work. Mind the gap!
Personally, I wish to become a corporate law trainee solicitor one day, and I am currently working hard at my full-time MBA at the BPP Business School. Previous to that, I did my GDL and LLB(Hons) there at BPP (at BPP Law School), and I completed my LLM in international commercial legal practice at the College of Law of England and Wales last year. The MBA is probably the most intense intellectual experience I’ve had recently, of all of these, but emphasizes the importance of the key competencies of teamwork, communication and (of course!) commercial awareness.
It’s become increasingly clear to me that business students wish to learn about the law, and law students wish to learn about business. We are fortunate at BPP to have superb schools in business and law, making such cross-fertilisation entirely possible (specifically, ‘working synergies’ avoiding the aforementioned ‘Silo Effect’).
I’ve founded a student society, run entirely by students for students, called the ‘Legal Awareness Society’. We currently hold fortnightly meetings in term-time with successful interactive discussions on ‘the importance of the law to business, and the importance of business to the law’ (our mission statement). Here’s a list of our meetings between now and December 2011.
We simply abbreviate the name of our Society to ‘LegalAware’, and a strength of this is our outreach to legal and business professionals (including journalists, firms and educators) and students through the social media. ‘LegalAware’ has a very popular Twitter stream, and really up-to-date blog. The blog has pages on the following topics:
- general legal news? and meetings
- arbitration
- climate change and the law
- competition
- corporate social responsibility
- debt finance
- e-commerce
- employment and pensions
- insurance
- intellectual property
- IPOs and rights issues
- Islamic finance
- joint ventures
- share acquisitions
- technology and the media
The beauty about this blog is that we can distribute material concerning our meetings even if our own students can’t physically make it (see, for example, our recent article and presentation on cloud computing and launching a legal e-mail marketing campaign). We have a team of students predominantly from BPP and beyond who contribute regularly to this material. The Society takes full responsibility for this material, our views are our personal and our own, and nothing to do with the staff or products/services of BPP proper. I’d love to hear from you if you’re doing something similar at a MBA school, or thinking about doing something similar in the near future. It would be great to swop notes for me!
Thus far, we have been particularly keen to involve law students who wish to demonstrate commercial awareness and/or teamwork skills in corporate law training contract applications this year. However, all attendees at our physical meetings so far have been MBA students (because presumably law students are on holiday), who ask really insightful questions about how the English law operates in reality! The beauty about the Society is that all discussions are conducted in a non-threatening way. I’d say the exams don’t come into it, but our recent discussion of corporate social responsibility would have been very useful for candidates of diet 1 of the recent diet of the BPP MBA ‘Markets and Marketing’ compulsory module. The Society never gives specific advice, but only have a rewarding discussion about the principles.
Finally, I think we will have achieved something if people genuinely derive benefit from understanding how the law and commerce interact, at both SME and corporate level. I also reckon it’s a great way for students and professionals to interact, avoid the ‘Silo Effect’, and even think about alternative career horizons, strange though that may seem.
LegalAware interactive presentation on e-commerce: cloud computing and e-mail marketing
Our interactive meeting of the BPP Legal Awareness Society was held last night at 5pm, BPP Business School, London. The Society holds physical meetings which are open to all, including law, finance and marketing students, but we founded the Society to promote the notion that English law is highly relevant (observing of it essential) for the conduct of any English business. All attendees last night were in fact MBA students, keen to learn about the legal aspects of English business in the context of the impact of the internet.
The internet throws up particular challenges, including data protection, security, privacy, governing laws and terms and conditions. Our discussion highlighted how many businesses and their clients would not even know about the existence of such issues.
After an introductory ‘LegalAware’ e-tutorial on e-commerce (link here), we discussed the impact which is likely to be made by “cloud computing” in the business world, the law that might be related to it, before talking about the ‘nuts-and-bolts’ of launching a successful e-mail marketing campaign, and the legal issues which most definitely relate to such campaigns. In case you missed it, I’ve uploaded the presentation here – you can ‘click through’ the menu to get to any slide. The details of the presentations are covered in these posts: cloud computing (here) and e-mail marketing (here).
To open the presentation, please click here.
Cloud Computing – an introduction to the "Cloud Industry Forum" and the "end user perspective"; meeting 12th June 2011, Microsoft (London)
An overview of the Cloud Industry Forum was provided by Andy Burton, Chief Executive Officer of Fasthosts. Then an account of the ‘end user perspective’ was given by Ronald Duncan, Chairman and Technical Director, @UKPlc, this morning at the meeting of the ‘Cloud Industry Forum’ at Microsoft, Victoria Street, London SW1.
The “Cloud Industry Forum” is a not-for-profit-organization, and has grown in prominence in the last two years. The Code of Practice was formally launched last year, and is a member-led organization. It is involved in technology standards, such as interoperability and data security. They are seeking to put the standards of the cloud on an international platform, and form constructive collaborations (for example, with Eurocloud). They are heavily involved in outreach work, as an independent party. The service definition is paramount, as well as the service level, working out when a breach is a breach (materially substantial causing to the production of ‘service credits’), and what the cap is (complete exclusion of liability at one end).
Microsoft have latterly joined the Cloud Industry Forum. Microsoft is actually predicted to be one of the two leaders in the cloud computing market over the next few years. Microsoft Corp is large player in the cloud landscape, according to Gartner it offers one of the most visionary and complete views of the cloud and is predicted to be one of the two leaders in the cloud computing market over the next few years. In 2010 Microsoft launched its “Cloud Power” global campaign to help IT professionals better understand the fundamental shift going on in the industry. Bing is a manifestation of their cloud technology, the well known search engine.
In the meeting, research was introduced at the meeting about cloud adoption, including a statistical analysis on how and why UK businesses are adopting the cloud. A second issue is its use in the supply chain, considering how IT can be consumed, including the challenges, opportunities and risks. Adoption appears to be strong and growing, but how is transparency ensured to the end-user about the complexities. Version 6.1 of the Code of Practice is being launched today, encompassing the CAIQ for data security, and enhanced liability tracking for third parties.
What is new about contracting in the cloud? People are used to the notion of click-through agreements. The cloud ensures much more collaborative IT services than previously, and is about ‘business process engineering’, the adoption of skills, increased collaboration, and the way in which stakeholders are changing. There are new entrants to the industry, and how end users perceive competitive advantage through building trust. An example is ‘hosted email’, which could be ‘shrink wrapped’ or a ‘bespoke service’, or by model SaaS, IaaS, managed service, or outsourced. Confidence, clarity and transparency are all required, notwithstanding the complexities of the supply chain; the end-user needs to be clear about who the supplier is, and whether this is clear in the ‘click-through’ agreement.
Things can go wrong e.g. with Amazon web services, but customers normally assume things to be all right. The Cloud Industry Forum has undertaken a significant body of research to investigate trends in end user adoption of Cloud services across the UK. Drawing information from 450 end user organisations across all verticals and scale, as well as 200 suppliers of IT solutions, this research has been structured into a series of informative White Papers. A link to the papers is here.
Cloud providers came to the conclusion that customers could not be liable. This was the starting position in 1999. Large organizations do not like this starting point. Software complexity can vary. Understanding what is available in the stack, data transfer and what the provider offers.
There is a potentially an imbalance from everything between hosted locally to export the cloud. This is definitely a communication message. Shared computers is nothing new, as distributed networks go back to the 1970s. There is a wave now where people do not realize they are using Hotmail or Gmail all the time. There has to be some balance, where people understand what the differences are according to price. A user perspective should understand what the user is getting for the money. Cloud is about repeating renewable business, and contractual clarity will help.
The basic principles are service expectations, good governance, business resilience and end user accountability and drivers. Governance applies to end users and suppliers. It needs to be realistic. Click through agreements are binding. There are big differences between individual customers and business perspectives. That’s why the Cloud Industry Forum is so important, to avoid PR fiascos in damaged reputations such as outtages (recent examples includes Amazon Web Services).
In summary, you may not be obliged to read the contract. The contractual bit is the bit that is too late. There is no wrong or right answer. The issue is not whether right or wrong, or whether users can be given advised.
Teamwork
This is an educational video prepared by the BPP Legal Awareness Society, and is an animation of two adults, not students, talking about what teamwork is and how to prepare for a job interviews which are competency-based. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. FMN Sports is not a real media distribution channel. Similarly, XNN does not exist as a brand of computers to knowledge of the author, and therefore the laptop shown is not a representation of a genuine computer made by XNN. Note that they are not promoting any product, service or cause. Please note that the video shown here is the intellectual property of the BPP Legal Awareness Society and as such does not represent the view of any employees or official representatives of BPP. This video may not be distributed without explicit permission from the Society. This may be sought on the website http://legal-aware.org by posting a comment on this video. This video is nothing to do with BPP Learning Media.
If you have any complaints about the video, please free to comment freely below.
Transcript
Angie:
Nice to see you again Belinda.
Belinda:
You too, Angie.
Angie:
Yep. What have you been up to?
Belinda:
Not much. I’ve been working for this radio show for several years now, and loving it. But I’ve got a job interview next week, and I’m bricking myself. It’s to be a journalist for my local newspaper. It’s a long time since I went to university and I don’t know what to do with my life!
Angie:
Haha. You’re not that old. Are there any issues you’re dodgy about?
Belinda:
Teamwork
Angie:
What?
Belinda:
Sorry?
Angie:
Pardon, I meant?
Belinda
Teamwork
Angie:
No probs. Teamwork is likely to asked about in your interview after what’s called a “competency-based” question. Competency-based selection methods are based on the assumption that past behaviour is the best predictor for future behaviour.
Belinda:
Where do these selection methods usually appear?
Angie:
Competency-based questions are now common on both application forms and at interview. These questions are looking for evidence of skills that are used in the job and often start with “Describe a situation where you had to ……” or “Give an example of when you ….”. It’s not enough to just say what you can offer. Just like a jury in court a selector will need convincing. You do this by giving evidence. You should give examples. Selectors are less interested in what you’ve done that how you’ve done it.
Belinda:
Brain block. Brain block. Help!
Angie:
When have you planned and organised an event, taken the initiative or lead a team. How do you cope with failure? Do you give up, or keep trying until you succeed. Or perhaps try an alternative route to your goal. Keep a log of what you have done, so you can remember any evidence you can use.
Belinda:
What competencies is the selector looking for, other than teamwork? It all sounds Double Dutch to me. Or should I say Greek?
Angie:
This will vary according to the job but competencies of importance to many recruiters of new and recent graduates include: communication skills, negotiation, persuasiveness, teamwork, decision-making, problem solving, planning and organization, and leadership. It’s probably worth having these in mind when you’re approaching any relevant question in your interview.
Belinda:
Can you give me any examples?
Angie:
Typical competency based commercial awareness questions include:
- Tell me of a time when you were given the task of improving a service or product?
- Tell me about a time you provided excellent customer service.
- Tell me of a time when you have been responsible for a budget.
- Give an example of when you worked in a team
- Give an example of when you worked under time pressure
- Give an example of when you worked as a leader.
- Give an example of when you persuaded someone to your point of view
Belinda:
Shucks
Angie:
I beg your pardon
Belinda:
Shucks. What can I do to prepare?
Angie
Read the employer’s web site and/or job description, and note the skills and competencies they require. You should note down any examples you can think of when you have put these competencies into practice. These examples could come from vacation or part-time work; university clubs and societies; voluntary work, study at school or university; holidays and travel or personal and family experiences.
Belinda:
And then what?
Angie:
Then you should compose a paragraph or so for each situation, outlining what happened, how you approached it and what the outcome was. Questions they might expect to face at most interviews (e.g. asking for an example of teambuilding, or showing that they are a fast learner) are difficult to answer well if you are not used to them, and haven’t prepared a list of examples to draw from. A good answer on teambuilding outlines difficulties you may have had with other team-members and show that you understand what you need to do to overcome that, rather than simply tell the interviewer that the team worked together really.
Belinda:
What if I can’t think of any suitable examples?
Angie:
Try and be as open as possible: the examples you give don’t have to be high-level. Planning and organising a week’s independent travel in your local village is as valid an example as a trek through the Himalayas. If you really can’t think of anything, consider how vital that competence is to the employer. If, for example, leadershio is a key factor, and you have really never taken the lead in anything, are you applying for the right job? Would you be happy in it?
Belinda:
Oh dear. Oh my dear. Thanks for your help though. I’m going to ask my careers advisor too. I value your time.
Commercial awareness
This is an educational video, an animation of two people interested in business and law talking about commercial awareness. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Note that they are not promoting any product, service or cause.
If you have any complaints about the video, please free to comment freely below.
Transcript:
Frank
Hi Bill. Good to see you again. What are you doing here in Rugby? What have you been upto?
Bill
Hi Frank. I thought Rugby wold make a nice change from Ipswich. I know you set up that e-learning business some time ago, as you fancied a change from being a mini-cab driver. Look, I know full well you’ve always wanted to study law and to becme a corporate lawyer one day. I admire you for that. Honest I do. Instead, I’ve been pottering around in management of a local shop. I’m launching a new range of pottery. Don’t forget, I’m quite a bit older than you, and I’ve been around the block a bit.
Frank
Bill, as a business professional with your company, what do you do to keep up your commercial knowledge of the rest of the world?
Bill
Frank, that’s not too difficult to answer. I have a lot of extra-curricular interests these days like reading, going to art galleries and the theatre. But for commercial awareness, I think it’s useful to read the financial headlines. I tend to get my information from the regular broadsheets, and the trusted sources of news on the TV and internet. Often, I also look at the textbooks from my University course many years ago! Luckily I can pop into a good local academic bookshop.
Frank
Bill, first thing’s first, what do you think that “commercial awareness” actually is?
Bill
Commercial awareness can be simply defined as staying updated on daily happenings and developments in the business and commercial world, I reckon. It’s probably fair to say that a significant portion of law today revolves around business and commerce, in the marketplace, between cities and regions and on a larger scale across entire cultures and countries. It can be fun to have an understanding of different cultures and countries in my opinion as I love travelling. Hence, commercial awareness is one of the key requirements a good and competent solicitor needs to master apparently.
Frank
How do you obtain commercial awareness, Frank?
Bill
We’ll this can’t happen overnight, but can be built over a period of time, starting early during your basic education and then honing up your expertise as you grow into starting a career and climb the ladder. It is critical to know of the overall framework within which law operates though in my opinion.
Some of the methods by which you can familiarize yourself with the idea of commercial awareness can be categorized as follows:
Number 1. Kearning and research – this is the most basic and easiest way to gain commercial knowledge. Reading newspapers, business publications such as magazines, company newsletters or watching or reading business-oriented programmes and discussions through various media.
Number 2. ??It also means staying updated on the latest deals, transactions, legislative changes and other relevant developments over a significant period of time, such that you are able to understand and appreciate both the big picture as well as contemplate micro-level analysis. ??Putting such developments into perspective with the way the economy and society are currently progressing will help you understand the implications of change and how it might affect you or the environment around you or different industries and business segments.??
Frank
Why is it important for you? I get the impression that commerce and law definitely go together. In your opinion, is business important to lawyers?
Bill
Look I’ve never been a lawyer, but commercial awareness is a key competency for all city job applications for lawyers I’m told. Frank, to be blunt, I wouldn’t know about commercial law really as I work in a small pottery business. There’s not a shred of doubt that you should aim to know the business of your client inside out, if you wish to be a successful lawyer.
For all those individuals who are aspiring to becoming lawyers, commercial awareness is an important capability which can make the difference between becoming or not becoming a good lawyer. ??Clients expect their lawyers to know in-depth details on how a business is run, what are the key factors for profitability and growth and how best to make optimal use of resources at hand.
Frank
Can you give me an example of commercial awareness?
Bill
Commercial awareness in general is comprised of knowledge of current deals and transactions and issues faced in the business world. For example, the ‘Credit Crunch’ is an issue that businesses are now facing. We found things tough in the pottery industry. People viewed our mugs as luxury. People will expect you to know about the credit crunch, and know what implications it has for your clients and their business. ??You must have an understanding of the business environment and the operational grid under which business is conducted on a daily basis.
Frank
Should you develop commercial awareness sooner rather than later?
Bill
Frank, it is best to start early on the road to commercial awareness. You’re just a youngster really. The first phase where this requirement will crop up is when you begin applying for your training contract. Most application forms have sections that are devoted to gathering information on how tuned-in to the business atmosphere you are as a prospective solicitor. ??This does not mean that you should be a business and economic guru; at this stage firms are only interested in checking that you have some basic understanding and an aptitude for the concept.
Frank
How do you prove your commercial awareness if you’re applying for a job?
Bill
For a prospective person working in the City, apparently, displaying a keen sense of commercial awareness will constitute a major portion of the application and recruitment process. You can begin with the details you provide in your application forms, continue with gathering data on the kind of business and practice the law firm you are applying to is involved in, and provide final proof of your proficiency during the interview process where quite a bit of time will be spent on measuring your commercial awareness.
Frank
Can you give me examples of such questions in an interview?
Bill
A friend of mine went for an interview at a law firm. He’s a corporate lawyer in fact. Typical commercial awareness questions include:
1. Describe a company you think is doing well/badly and explain why you think this is so.
2. What do you think are key qualities for a company to have to be successful?
3. What significant factors have affected this industry in recent years?
Frank
Thanks Bill
Bill
Pleasure Frank
