Home » Posts tagged 'Reed Smith'
Tag Archives: Reed Smith
Can lawyers benefit from understanding business? Emphatically, yes.
I am writing this post completely independently of BPP. As a current LPC student at BPP Law School in Holborn, I was very interested to read a recent article about a pilot of a new course to commence in September 2012, thought to be the first of its kind, called “MA (LPC with Business)”. The LPC of course has a formal name in itself ‘Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice’, so it makes complete sense to ‘top up’ LPC modules with further modules to constitute a degree-level course.
I think the critical thing about this new course is that it allows students to study both business and law concurrently. I am one of the few people in the UK to have done postgraduate qualifications in law (LLM) and business (MBA), though there are some very senior people who have done both. I therefore studied business and law separately, and it took me around three or four years in total, but I think a combined Masters for future trainee lawyers is a very good idea.
Most of the general public do not have a good understanding of what business is. The tragedy is most people on completing the GDL do not either, and even the exposure to management theory and practice is limited on the compulsory practice area ‘Business Law Practice’ on the Legal Practice Course. This is limiting, as I believe that corporate lawyers benefit from understanding the business motives of their clients. I don’t believe this is the same thing at all as necessitating a psychiatrist should have a history of severe depression, but I think it’s more similar to a cardiologist wishing to help a patient with his depression so that his heart symptoms get better. This analogy brings out a problem of this relationship – the patient does not probably wish to come to see a cardiologist about his depression, and would prefer to see a specialist psychiatrist anyway about his depression.
You learn things in business management which you simply do not learn in the business law practice course in the LPC. There are too many to list here in this brief personal opinion, but a clear example is how to draft up a business plan. Business students also learn in depth about organisations and culture, corporate strategy, operations, leadership, marketing, economics and (sometimes) innovation. More specifically, there are “learning outcomes” which are clearly beneficial in this context (see for example module 1 of the SJ Berwin “Masters in Law” with Business programme prospectus):
- assess the relevance of concepts of economic theory to the competitive context within which a business operates;
- apply techniques of business and market analysis;
- analyse the determinants of competitive advantage and the techniques for assessing strategic potential;
- examine a range of techniques used by commercial organisations as the basis for formulating a business strategy and creating a strategic plan for leaders in a business;
- consider the challenges presented in implementing a business strategy and achieving organisational alignment; and
- critically assess business practice in relation to risk management, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility.
Likewise, you can learn things in postgraduate legal studies which you don’t learn in business, like how to draft up commercial legal agreements, the details of intellectual property and their protection, and the regulation of financial activities in the City. In my LLM (done at the College of Law), the course providers were at pains to ensure you could ‘read’ a complicated commercial law case, knew how to pitch legal services to a client through an oral presentation, and knew how to draft complicated agreements. I have not done these activities to such a detailed level on the LPC.
I don’t think it’s a problem that I never studied these concurrently, however. For example, the award-winning Simmons and Simmons LPC/MBA course allows you to study these subjects side-by-side. Either way, I feel hand-on-heart it’s a brilliant strategy by BPP to offer such an integrated specialised training, which I can see as very appealing to the corporate clients of BPP. As I am clearly not doing these courses myself, I hope you will allow me my strong endorsement of them!
BPP Careers Fair – Thursday 29 March 2012
Thank you to the BPP Careers Team for organising the BPP Annual Law Careers Fair 2012 this Thursday 29 March 2012. It was great to meet Saira Iqbal for the first time, and Eric Migliaccio whom I know well from Holborn.
All students of BPP were invited. We met up in the lower ground floor of the Waterloo campus of BPP Law School between 3 pm and 7 pm.
Legal training providers/City firms attending the event included Addleshaw Goddard, Boodle Hatfield, Charles Russell, Clyde & Co., CMS Cameron McKenna, Dundas and Wilson, Eversheds, Fox Williams, Government Legal Service, Jones Day, Kennedy, Macfarlanes, Orling, Herrington & Sutcliffe, Osborne Clarke, Reed Smith, Sidney Austin, Squire, Sanders and Hammonds, Stephenson Harwood, and Withers.
I went along there on completion of my second SGS on professional conduct and regulation at BPP Law School, Holborn. We had been studying financial promotions and mainstream/incidental activities as a solicitor (as indicated by the FMSA and SRA conduct rules).
I must say that I had a really enjoyable time. In fact, soon afterwards, I came to the decision that I would not apply for a training contract until after I had completed (and passed) the Legal Practice Course. I am not in an overwhelming hurry to do the training contract, as I am 37, and I have already experienced much in my life.
That’s what made my afternoon all the more enjoyable. I happened to speak to Alex, Emma, Izzy, Jonathan, Lorraine, Simon, Sarah amongst a few others (whose names I should have jotted down to be honest) at Addleshaw Goddard, Boodle Hatfield, CMS Cameron McKenna, DMH Stallard, Government Legal Service, Eversheds, Macfarlanes, and Stephenson Harwood. Having done numerous unsuccessful applications for training contract and vacation placements in the past, I must admit I had become rather jaded about the whole experience. It was therefore really refreshing for me to actually that these representatives of legal entities were all very nice people, all personable, extremely knowledgeable about the firms they worked for, and the legal sector in general.
This of course should be no surprise, but they do include one or two firms which have rejected my previous applications (I’ve never been interviewed by any of them). In some cases, it was really nice to meet the person behind the Twitter account, although I did accidentally find myself screening myself the law firms by an innocent question on their approach to social media. Of course, it was brilliant to meet @legaltrainee – Eversheds have been remarkably successful in treating recruitment as a two-way dialogue, where both parties can find out more about each other’s identity and culture in a mutually beneficial way; they also offer a number of excellent opportunities including the combined study training contract programme, for example. Likewise, it was lovely to meet the team behind @DMHSRecruitment, who IRL were as positive about the work of their firm as they are on Twitter daily; they also confirmed that the biggest gripe of a legal recruiter, aside from application forms with poor spelling and grammar, was an inability by the candidate to answer the question asked. Finally, I met members of our own society there, the BPP Legal Awareness Society (the official BPP students website, blog, twitter, Facebook) and members of the excellent BPP Commercial Awareness Society there too.
Legal entities either fielded graduate recruitment advisors, managers or administrators, and/or current trainees (including mostly BPP graduates). I had the pleasure of discussing the legal doctrine of proportionality, innovation, the relative importance of corporate social responsibility, and expansion of legal services into Eastern Europe with the Government Legal Service, Eversheds, Addleshaw Goddard and CMS Cameron McKenna, with current trainees respectively. For some firms, applying would be awkward in a sense that I don’t wish to fall out if I ultimately have rejection (it’s a highly competitive market out there), but something I’ve learned that the whole process is not personal in the sense until it comes to interview. I personally liked all the people I met on Thursday.
Without naming names, I would like to thank the legal entities for a fresh supply of pens, praline chocolates, a frisbee, a memory stick, hemp bags, company literature and highlighter pens. It’s the thought that counts, but actually all are very useful to me! What I especially found very reassuring was how the law firms have such a high regard for BPP – and the feeling is entirely mutual, I assure them…
Thank you for all giving up your time to attend, and, despite it being a hot day, I hope that the legal entities enjoyed meeting the current students of BPP.
