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Jon Harman and Scott Slorach: learning in the new digital age, lessons from @CollegeofLaw
An e-book is not an electronic form of a book.
I first encountered the iTutorial when I was a LLM student by distance learning by the College of Law. They are professionally presented, but I suppose that is neither here nor there. I like television news generally. The reason they work is that it’s possible to replay parts you don’t understand, and the ‘quizzes’ are very helpful to check progress.
That Jon Harman, Director of Learning at the College of Law, is interested in gaming is of no surprise. Jon is remarkably astute at environment sensing, which is the hallmark of all exceptional innovators. And “gaming”, and the approaches exemplified through the TED demonstrates, is what innovation is actually about. The success of any innovation is ultimately determined by its ease of use, how easily it can be explained, and how much people enjoying the innovation. It’s ideally meant to be an ‘easier’ way of doing thing, and the ultimate nirvana in education is for students to feel as if they’re learning for themselves in a relatively effortless manner.
This is where I feel gaming should perhaps come in, and Jon and Scott may in fact be ahead of their time. My own training was at Cambridge in neuroscience, and for a brief period in academic neurology, before I took a brief necessary detour in legal and business legal education. I am therefore concerned about how the brain works in practice. We have 1000 billion neurones, many of which make connections to one another, some functional, some not. The brain, in a way that a supercomputer might hope to be, probably has exploded in size in evolution due to the way in which combines information through ‘oscillations’ of neural activity. It’s long been of interest to Prof Horace Barlow at Cambridge, now retired but indeed Prof Colin Blakemore’s supervisor (Prof Blakemore has now head of the physiology department at Oxford for a long time), why the human brain often does functions which are subserved much ‘lower down’ in the animal kingdom, such as the fly’s eye.
The clue to this, I believe, comes from the design of the brain. The brain has rather specialised areas involved in planning, working memory, different types of factual memory, all the five senses (including especially vision), and of course movement. But sitting under the brain is of course the brainstem, and this has a fundamental role in motivation and arousal. And somewhere in the brain, probably near the front, is the part most connected with emotion (though it’s probably fair to say that the emotional state is spread quite widely throughout the entire body).
Learning is not just about learning a series of facts (or cases). Your state of mind, and indeed your mood or alertness, can both have significant effects on ‘how much you take in’, how much you are able to think on the spot, how much you are able to filter appropriate and inappropriate information, and how appropriate your solutions are. I think it is utterly reasonable for Jon and Scott to take this approach to how students can benefit from a learning process, and to think about how their learning materials can bring out the best in their students. That they have effectively come from the starting point of how the human brain actually works is of course a big honour to my own particular origin of my own learning, which are the fields of neuroscience and neurology.
The anti-social network
There are many advantages to a firm embracing twitter as part of their corporate strategy, and these have been discussed elsewhere extensively, including by @BrianInkster, @kilroyt, @bhamiltonbruce, @legalbrat, @colmmu, @NewLeafLaw, @LindaCheungUK and @LegalBizzle (= top (legal) commentator). @Miss_TS_Tweets has recently been given the go-ahead to take part in a corporate blogging exercise, and her recent experiences can be seen in her blog post as of yesterday. I am not going to talk about aspects of the ‘lawyers enjoying the tweet taste of success‘ described by Alex Aldridge, in his recent Guardian article. The tweeting community benefits from all contributors, ranging from @charonqc to @AshleyConnick, with differing but complementary perspectives. This all may be a far cry from what Mark Zuckenberg had originally conceived of in development and implementation of his ‘social network‘.
A medium-sized firm might be able to secure generic competitive advantages through their unique relationships in diverse practice areas and sectors (some of which might be extremely community-friendly such as social enterprises), but there always remains the ‘glocal‘ challenge – i.e. how to make such a fundamentally national or international approach work level at an individual basis within a particular town in England, Scotland or Wales, for example. My story here revolves around twitter, but it could equally apply to blogs such as this one. Equally, the strategy could be one focused on imparting knowledge including press releases and relevant publications (see, for example, the excellent @SJ_Weekly account which acts as a handle for the main journal/magazine). A robust synthesis of how to approach twitter in the corporate law was offered by them in a excellent thought-provoking post, “Tweet Forth And Multiply“, earlier this year. Jean-Yves Gilg, the Editor of Solicitors Journal, is well-known to be interested in this emerging area in corporate law.
Such educational initiatives via the social media can be extremely effective, even if the initial communication appears unidirectional but quickly allow prompt recriprocity (see for example the brand new educational initiative for law students, @TSL_Tweets and their rapidly-updated website). For example, Brian Inkster and Linda Cheung of the Institute of Directors, noticeably through @cubesocial, had emphasised the crucial importance of high quality people-relationship building, for example. However even the CubeSocial analysis has recently evolved into something further, with personal conversation management an achievable goal (as explained in Kim’s blog on 7 September 2011). This is essential for the ‘carryover’ effect for profitability of transactions, beyond the corporate billing of a single transaction, arguably.
The blog post of @Miss_TS_Tweets reinforces the view that corporate social media does not involve a network that is entirely “social”: it involves what I feel is an “anti-social network“. In her blogpost, Miss_TS_Tweets provides an example that you wouldn’t be necessarily be expected to wear a name badge at a social event outside work hours, so why should you be so identifiable if doing corporate twitter or acting as a corporate blogger? There are certainly issues about the infrastructure of the firm, its management and leadership, its customers/clients/competitors, its supply chain and network, its quality management, its process and quality management and its resource allocation which will influence the operational efficacy of implementation of a new corporate strategy within an organisation, whether in an incremental or revolutionary way.
It’s probably advisable for the anti-social network to developed, created and implemented according to well-known principles in management and leadership to maximise the chances of success. This is critically dependent on all members of the organisation, but this is dependent on realisation that the employee of the corporate firm cannot necessary be expected to do twitter 24/7 and needs some time to be in anti-social network (anti-social to work but social to ‘real immediates’, i.e. with personal friends and families only. Lawyers, like architects, journalists, physicians or surgeons, need their quality “me-time” too. Resource allocation and funding demonstrate a commitment to any particular innovation in a corporate, but paying somebody to be available 24/7 might unfortunately introduce some contractual obligation to be ‘on-call’ on twitter when the top priority should clearly be the nuts-and-bolts of practising the law like the drafting of contracts. Expecting somebody to tweet on a single merged work/personal account means that tweets become prominently designed to ‘play safe’, diminishing the breadth of substance to the tweets.
However, in the culture of the corporate firm embracing twitter, it is vital that corporate tweeters forge powerful relationships with all other stakeholders, which might include lay members of the general public, marketing and media analysts, lawyers, managers, others, or themselves. For this innovative approach to succeed, everybody’s input could be welcomed but in such a way where diversity is respected – this includes for different physical abilities, or hierarchy (e.g. trainee up to partner). The atmosphere has to be open.
The inherent issue with Twitter is that it is vehemenently innovative, such that participants must be able to feel they can make mistakes, and can take some risks. Corporate tweeters should not be penalised financially or otherwise if they make innocent mistakes, as a lot of damage can be done towards the enormous goodwill for the corporate tweeting to be a success. Giving improper advice would be wholly inadvisable for corporate tweeters, as they do indeed deserve to be disciplined by @sra_solicitors (and correspondingly @barstandards for the ‘other half’) for imparting incorrect advice which undermines the reputation of and confidence within the legal profession as a whole. The code of conduct for the routine operation of lawyers who are solicitors, including confidentiality issues, integrity or conflicts of interest (say), can be immediately applied to Twitter, which is merely just a genre of media. Corporate tweeters will perhaps need the help of senior people or specialists to advise constructively on this, in the same way a trainee would not be able to cough without someone noticing. That’s where a supportive education and training division, under the clever guidance of HR, might kick in to guarantee training (there possibly might be some actual skill to doing twitter effectively?), and robust encouragement is given for social media engagement.
The risk of such risky comments might indeed be mitigated by the corporate tweeter explaining that views are not necessarily thoe of the firm, and the corporate tweeters could be interspersed throughout the firm that an organisational change which is pro-twitter is not threatened by obstructive barriers within the organisation, the so-called “silo effect“. As there is much tacit knowledge potentially to be shared, such as the shared experiences of personal corporate tweeters in their personal accounts, it’s essential that these experiences are freely shared by established corporate tweeters and newcomers.
Risk-taking is a very tricky for those implementing a corporate twitter change to get their head around. If corporate tweeters, it’s pivotal that a ‘blame culture’ does not swoop down on the few member trying to make it work, and there is a balanced assessment of any successes (like @LegalTrainee actually achieving in improving quality and/or quantity of trainee recruitment through measurable analytics). There has to be clear authority, time scape and authority-to-act in the implementation of resources to make such a corporate twitter strategy work.
It might be helpful for ‘corporate twitter leaders‘ to be dispersed within the organisation, to ensure that the embracing of Twitter is a genuine one, and not a cosmetic one for purely marketing purposes (as can go wrong in disability accsss or corporate social responsibility). Individual motivation is clearly important but it is perhaps likely to work best if aligned with the overall goals of the organisation. This might be for example for a firm to have an excellent reputation and license-to-operate in something technologically -related, or prove that the firm can offer something different in traditional areas such as insolvency or company law.
Lawyers may want to take it in turns in covering their corporate tweeting commitments, and will not individually be available 24/7, particularly if they are in their 20-40s with young families; however clients, particularly in this brave new world including alternative business structures, may wish to feel that there is someone there, and Twitter could be powerful in establishing this even if it is actually merely an illusion. The trick would then to be to make a partly anti-social network look wholly social at a superficial glance, at the very least.
So, having taken the plunge to make a law firm succeed in the brave new world of Twitter, as indeed Inksters and Silverman Sherliker (@London_Law_Firm), the firm of Chris Sherliker and Jennie Kreser (@pensionlawyeruk), have proved, it would be tragic to see such an innovative strategy literally implode through lack of direction of management. This is unfortunately where lawyers, including partners, may have to concede that they can’t do everything; in much in the same way social media gurus will go nowhere without the help of their corporate tweeting colleagues.
Round my kitchen table – transcript of my @AlexAldridgeUK podcast with @kevinpoulter on disability (done by @legalacademia)
Transcribed by Gary Walters of www.StretLaw.com – Twitter: @legalacademia
transcript, (c) Gary Walters, 2011
I am hugely thankful to @legalacademia for producing this transcript of our podcast last Friday.
“Round my kitchen table podcast: having a face that fits” 08 September 2011
Chair:
Alex Aldridge (AA)
Guests: Head of BPP Law School’s Legal Awareness Society – Shibley (S)
Kevin Poulter, Employment lawyer at Bircham Dyson Bell (KP)
AA: Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of my round the kitchen table podcast, I’m Alex Aldridge, columnist from Guardian Law section and US correspondent of UK Legal blog ‘Above the Law’.
With me this week is Shibley (S) a law graduate who tweets at Legal Aware. Shibley has a doctorate from Cambridge University and is currently looking for a training contract.
Also we’ve got my regular guest Kevin Poulter an employment lawyer with corporate firm Bircham Dyson Bell.
Last week I wrote an article in the Guardian about lawyers with disabilities which was inspired by a conversation I had with Shibley who has a disability and so far Shibley has been unsuccessful in his hunt for a training contract.
Shibley, if you could tell us a little bit about that.
S: Yes, I have done around 50-60 application for a training contract, some have done more so I consider myself lucky.
AA: 50-60 applications?
S: In total, I have done around 10 this year because I’ve lost some interest.
AA: Just to recap, what stage exactly are you at of the qualification process?
S: Well, it’s complicated. Due to a 2 month coma at the end of 2007 – as a result of this I was wheelchair bound and did my GDL in March 2009.
AA: Where did you study those courses?
S: At BPP (Law school) then I switched to College of Law where I stuck doing my studies by Distance Learning. I graduated January this year with a commendation from the College of Law, once I have completed my MBA I’ve decided it is time to bite the bullet and do my training contract.
Transcribed by Gary Walters of www.StretLaw.com – Twitter: @legalacademiaAA: so tell us about those applications, how many interviews?
S: 2 interviews with Magic Circle firms, and they were very nice to me actually at the interviews.
AA: then you received rejections?
S: Yes! (laughter). I was glad to go (to the interviews) so at least I could explain where I was coming from
AA: But, what happened in those interviews? Where they wholly positive? Were there any negative elements at all?
S: Actually, they asked all the usual stuff, which I think they ask everyone now, to be honest. Questions about law, their firm, what interests in commercial law do you have, what have you done, what have you read in the news, but as long as your face fits, bingo! You’ve got your training contract.
KP: I was curious about how you got two interviews in Magic Circle firms I imagine is a long process, even getting to interview stage, so how are you affected? Are you affected anyway? By assessment days, by vocation schemes, by the test, by anything else that was put in front of you to get you to an interview? Because I know there are probably a lot of people out there who would really quite like an interview at a Magic Circle firm and they’re struggling as well. What have you had to go through?
S: Well, actually I have learnt this slowly but main thing is to tell them that you may need some special care, what they call ‘reasonable adjustments’. In other words you must liaise with them carefully, especially during psychometric test, or if you need print to be extra big like my case, you must tell them. Obviously they can’t make the necessary adjustments if they don’t know you have a problem. They did take it very seriously and there were no mistakes.
KP: But actually just in terms of getting those interviews…
AA: I suppose it doesn’t hurt the fact that you got a Ph.D. from Cambridge, they must like that. Are there any other tips? Because you’ve been quite successful in terms of getting interviews, two at magic circle firms, any tips?
S: Well I think the thing is not to think you can simply get the interviews. So you need to pay good attention to good careers service – they teach you some useful things. The firms’ websites do tell you how they expect you to act as well, which is also important.
AA: That’s interesting because when I was at law school, many years ago, there was a kind of arrogance amongst students towards the careers service – almost as if these people don’t know what they are talking about. You really value the advice you got from them?
S: Yes, also I take you back to this ‘face fits’ but actually understanding rejection is useful because it’s quite personal. Understanding rejection can be a good thing but also that you don’t fit their organisation’s culture is a good exercise.
AA: This face fitting thing – we had an interesting conversation offline. I wish we could have such an interesting one in front of the microphone, hopefully we can recreate that…but I think it is an important idea that your ‘face fits’ at a law firm.
KP: I think it is important because if you don’t fit in, then you won’t be happy there. And either you won’t be happy or the firm won’t be happy with you and ultimately you’ll end up going your separate ways. And I think that is why in many ways the process for applications, the training contracts is so laborious. Guess you got to get down from a thousand applications to ten training contracts. But, part of the process is getting to know you; the back schemes, at lot of it is the social time as much as it is time spent in the office. A lot of the back schemes spend time in the pub, karaoke, going out for lunches either as a group or in smaller groups.
AA: So basically you’re saying to get a training contract you’ve got to be a ‘certain’ type of person?
KP: No, I’m not. I think in certain firms there is an expectation, desire for you to be a certain type of person. You’ve already mentioned that in one of the Magic Circle firm interviews they wanted to know about your commercial awareness and the reasons why you wanted to become a commercial lawyer, it’s the same thing. Whether it is about being a personality in terms of your academic background, whether that be in terms of your interest in a particular subject area or particular sector. There’s no point in going for a job at a legal aid firm if you’re wanting to be doing higher level commercial transactions.
AA: OK, so put it this way, alright. Say you’re interested in high level commercial transactions and you’re massively intelligent, you hate karaoke, you hate going to the pub, you don’t really like hanging out with people, (laughter) well, not necessarily enjoy hanging out with people but you don’t enjoy hanging out with those other commercial lawyers, where do those people fit in corporate firms?
KP: I think, there’s (pauses) it’s difficult to say, the reality is people that do well are those that do well in the job but also they’re confident, they’re social around the office, they make the effort to get know people because that is ultimately where your work comes from. You have to be able to build up a community within the office, from my own experience anyway. This is what is important, relationship’s with your clients – if you have some sort of social problem then, depending on what sort of area you’re working in it may well be you’re not doing as well in the job as you could be doing. We talked again, offline, about Barristers (laughter) who are famously known for kind of working on their own. It can be a lonely job; they take instructions at the last minute they (Barristers) deal with paperwork whereas we (Solicitors) deal with people frequently and in fact a lot of academics are barristers and very rarely they transfer to become solicitors.
AA: When I worked briefly as a paralegal at a City law firm, I just didn’t fit in to that office culture, I find it hard to articulate now I think about it, it’s not that I don’t like people, I love people, but I just didn’t fit in to that ‘boyish’ culture, one of the lads, that’s never really been me. To put this to Shibley, you come from an academic background and you say that actually counts against you?
S: yes, definitely as you come across very academic and I’m proud to say I have a first class from Cambridge and my Ph.D. from there, I’m on my 8th degree. That does come across as an academic and can come across as a liability for them, in employment that is a concern.
AA: Why a liability?
S: Perhaps if you use mental shortcuts, someone who prefers working on his own, and is less easily employed…At Cambridge where I trained you really had to have very good social skills – what we call commercial intelligence so I think to label academics as poor communicators is not right as some are good, brilliant people. Also, the issue about socialising, some academics like socialising too and whilst I do not drink I’m happy to socialise, and I enjoy it and also to be fair the amount of socialising involved can be separated from the job.
KP: There’s a perception involved that having 8 degrees, your interest is purely academia. A perception that someone who has a disability noted on their training contract application that they will be more hard work, harder to deal with, it might be wrong, it might be unfair and similarly for me coming into the profession initially I came in with my training contract and it was only part way through my training contract that I came out (as being gay) as a result of that I accepted it, every knows, it’s fine there is no problem. Is it something you would put down on the form? No, because I don’t need any reasonable adjustments to make any difference as I could still do the job regardless, well, err, hopefully (laughter). But, the point is that it does come down to character and personality and it’s about perception. Your perception of the environment you’re going into as a lawyer, you’re applying for new jobs and have to do your homework to make sure that is a firm you will be happy in. (agreement in background) Equally, and quite rightly, the firm has to do its homework to make sure you fit in with its ethos, its ideology, its values and with everyone else that works there, because you have to get on with them. At least sufficiently to be able to have a working relationship.
AA: Sure, sure, just generally speaking, law firms in particular seem to be quite good places for gay people. They seemed to have made a good effort with their LGBT groups.
KP: Yeah, there are a lot of groups out there. It’s the same with lots of different diverse backgrounds, the black solicitors’ network does a fantastic job, it does it surveys I think annually now. The association of Muslim lawyers, Association of Disabled Solicitors, there are various others, and yet is it right they exist? I ask myself the same question when I got involved in establishing a gay employment network. Do we need a gay employment network? How far down the line do we go with this?
AA: Do you think we do?
KP: Well, obviously I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be involved with it (laughter). But I think it’s just giving people the opportunity to come to an environment where they’re comfortable but it’s also business opportunity and I think this is what is important. Yes, these things (groups) are set up to be supportive, yes they’re set up to be visible, but also it’s an excellent network for getting to know people, transferring of contacts, for getting work.
AA: There are of course, groups for disabled lawyers have you been in contact with any them?
S: Yes, lawyers with disabilities via the Law Society and I would like to pick up on a point made by Kevin regarding the social issue whether there should be groups or not, certain groups of society being ‘partitioned off’. I think it comes from Kevin in fact when he says that you can add value to your firm…how law firm brings value to society and commerce, is incredibly important to have a diverse background of lawyers within a firm for social value.
AA: We’re going to have to wrap this up, thanks to you both of you for joining me, and thanks for listening, and I’ll be back next week.
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”.
I am definitely living in Banana Republic regarding phone hack sleaze
This is the only reporting of the UK phone scandal in a UK newspaper, because of the widespread blackout in the UK news media:
Andy Coulson discussed phone hacking at News of the World, report claims
New York Times publishes allegations that PM’s media adviser ‘actively encouraged’ unlawful practice while editor
Guardian story
This is the NY Times Story.
Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond
New York Times story
I am definitely living in the UK : a total banana republic.
I sympathise with how Alastair Campbell is feeling on this, as self-reported on Twitter.
