A recent Legal Week roundtable, in association with LexisNexis, addressed the crucial issue of professional development and how law firms with modern, effective training structures can steal a march on their rivals in the war for talent. Scott Appleton reports

Professional development opportunities are a key recruitment and retention tool for law firms and in-house legal departments. But many wrestle with how best to nurture and develop their junior talent – with a strong belief among partners that their efforts are little helped by the poor shape of law graduates.

Legal Week, in association with LexisNexis, recently held a roundtable on the issue with an invited panel to debate what professional development means for lawyers and whether law firms are providing the right sort of training to the right people.

The debate was informed by a recent survey of more than 300 lawyers of all levels by Legal Week and LexisNexis, which found that, while technical legal training is the dominant development need – identified by 96% of all respondents, increasing to 100% among senior assistants – there is also a consistently high demand for 'softer' skills such as presentation (88%), leadership (68%) and managerial training (66%), and among junior lawyers (up to five years' post-qualification experience) for mentoring programmes (79%).

Law undergraduates

A key theme from the outset of the roundtable was that firms now have to instil a much broader legal view in the training of their very junior lawyers. Traditional undergraduate courses are simply too academic.

A developing trend is that some firms are even slanting their recruitment towards non-law graduates. "Firms and clients like rounded people – therefore a non-law degree can be attractive," said Suzanne Fine, global head of learning and development at Linklaters.

The issue is so important that, as in the US, law is likely to become a predominantly postgraduate option, predicted Nigel Savage, chief executive at the College of Law. "Probably no other profession is less interested in graduates who have studied their subject at undergraduate level," he said. "Students can do a three-year law course and come out never having seen a real-life contract."

Theory is important, but it is an ability to apply knowledge that makes the difference, agreed the panel. "Much of the problem is that the courses focus on learning and not on teaching people to think," argued John Heaps, Eversheds' head of litigation.

"We talk about blended learning to find the appropriate training mix for each student. The emphasis must be on the student and not on the course," said Elizabeth Mytton, vice chair of the committee of heads of university law schools. "Success stories often come from students who have done placements because they know what is happening on the ground."

Following precedent

What the profession clearly needs are young solicitors who can integrate technical knowledge with flexibility of thought – but are law firms doing enough to marry theoretical understanding with actual practice?

Duncan Wales, European general counsel at ICAP, crystallised the panel's view that going from a law degree via professional exams into private practice risks stifling the intellectual flexibility of junior lawyers. "Law graduates are trained to think in terms of 'correct' and 'not correct' which too often forces them to stick rigidly to precedent and not to think flexibly."

Overemphasis on precedent and process, agreed Geoffrey Beedham, chief counsel at BT Global Services, can get in the way of reaching an outcome. "In a commercial situation, where a client needs its legal team to focus on getting the deal done, young lawyers are too often focused on the chase, rather than the kill."

Linklaters' Fine noted that while precedents can ensure a certain standard of service, it is also important for them to "use their brains". Heaps acknowledged that perhaps firms' own emphasis on technical resources has, in part, caused them to move away from the traditional 'watch and learn' training approach of old.

Weightmans partner Mark Landon was equally straightforward. "New graduates and junior lawyers typically lack the experience to be good business people. They need to be better equipped during their education and training to understand their clients' businesses: too often they are seen by clients as creating barriers rather than facilitating solutions. A good lawyer is like high grade motor oil, ensuring that the client engine runs smoothly."

An emphasis on secondments for young lawyers, noted Beedham, can be a practical way of understanding clients' business needs – a belief enthusiastically shared by almost half the US lawyers surveyed, although strikingly by only a quarter of the UK lawyers.

One size fits all?

A further area of debate was on the acceptance that not all law graduates make good lawyers, and the growing need to embrace those that are content not to even become lawyers.

"Increasingly, the commoditisation of certain legal work means there is a greater demand for experienced paralegals," says Landon. "In addition, the need is for people who are happy to undertake such a role on a long-term basis as well as those who see a paralegal role as merely a stepping stone to qualifying as a solicitor."

As well as improving the consistency of legal services, it is suggested that this could also save in fees. "Clients will not continue to pay £300 to £500 per hour or more for every type of service, so paralegal work will continue to develop," said Heaps.

"We need to develop an interim qualification; or at least to allow those students that want to leave after their compulsory training to do so," suggested Savage. "The Law Society makes us prepare students to be aggressive litigators. But this is not what clients want. The regulator needs to move in this direction. We are required by the Law Society to prepare lawyers for an environment that is fast disappearing."

"We must also remember that we do not need all lawyers to be management material," added Jon Brewer, director of practitioner solutions at LexisNexis. "There is a need for a middle layer to deliver the core services to the client. If you only train for partnership, you will be overpaying."

Josh Bottomley, managing director of LexisNexis, said: "It is worth looking at the changes in accountancy and investment banking, where their training and development makes a clear distinction between client relationship skills, which operate across the firm, and execution skills, which are increasingly specific to each area of the business. We have to find a way to give lawyers more time to understand the client business at the same time as we develop their technical legal training to excellent levels."

What training?

But what training do lawyers require? The survey highlighted technical and soft skills training as key.

"Young lawyers will always say they need more technical training, but actually what they need is a more robust way of thinking," suggested David Higham, visiting professor of litigation management at Nottingham Law School.

While soft skills may be important, training can miss the point. "What is needed in client situations are lawyers with an ability to express themselves clearly. To do this they need to be clear thinkers. Often, they are not. Presentation training will go some way to masking this deficiency, but it will not remedy it," he says.

There are also mixed views on the benefit of business training for lawyers – which almost a half of all respondents identified as a required element of their professional development. But while it may help instil a level of commercial reality, many of the panel again felt that client understanding is best learnt on the job.

"The level of detail required in further training has to be more than a mere awareness of accounting and tax – it must be practical," said Wales. "As a buyer of legal services I look for core qualities of responsiveness, practicality and commercial understanding – to have someone who can actually understand the comparative magnitude of different risks."

Savage queried the dangers of over-specialisation in junior lawyers. "In the past, firms have been able to identify lawyers' strengths, who then move into their chosen direction, but now firms are being driven by the business they win."

An area of consensus in which more should, and can, be done is in project management training – lawyers are not revered for hitting deadlines agreed the panel.

Reflecting needs

Survey respondents were clear that the best form of development training is in one-to-one or group coaching – identified also as the dominant delivery method within law firms.

The panel, in line with respondents, have a pragmatic view of the value of online tools – although there is a clear divergence of enthusiasm for them between junior and senior lawyers.

Where it does have strengths, some of the panel suggested, is in teaching non-fee-earning expertise. The joint development by a number of firms on the provision of an e-learning course on compliance has been significant. The consortia approach is one that Ann Hemming, product specialist at Lexis-Nexis, felt is likely to develop further – not least because of the cost efficiencies.

However, there was less praise for law schools' course development, often done in isolation with a strong emphasis on providers sitting down with their clients, the law firms, to discuss specific needs – and for these needs to be reflected.

"Law school does not always prepare trainees for the rigour of practice in a firm like ours, so we have to address this in the training we offer after they join us," said Fine.