President’s Address

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

Is there a demand for formal CPD to return?

Formal CPD assessments for solicitors were scrapped on 1 November 2016. Instead, the responsibility fell on law firms to consider the quality of its practice and to identify any learning and development needs. Many were concerned that this would result in fewer checks to ensure the competence of lawyers.

In early 2020 The Legal Services Board confirmed that the decision to scrap CPD assessments would be reviewed as it was important to understand how standards would be maintained amongst lawyers.

It was recently announced that during the second half of the year, the Legal Services Board will formally consult on how solicitors are being measured on annual training in order to ensure that they remain competent throughout their careers. Any future changes could include targeted visits to firms where it is felt that clients are at risk due to lack of training.

In addition, the Legal Services Board is likely to recommend that the SRA and other regulators introduce a scheme to identify any solicitor who fails to meet the required competency standards.

I believe that this is a well needed change because the public need to feel confident that lawyers have the current skills and knowledge required to do the job. They also need to feel that lawyers continue to be measured by a high standard in order to maintain trust in the services that we provide.

THE SHOCKING COST OF THE SOLICITORS QUALIFYING EXAMINATION

The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) comes into force on 1st September 2021. The transitional period when individuals can choose whether to qualify under the existing routes or the SQE route also begins on 1st September 2021. However, several providers will continue to offer the existing route to qualification for at least three years from September 2021.

Under the SQE route you must:

• still hold a degree or equivalent, i.e. an apprenticeship in any subject;

• pass the new SQE assessments i.e. SQE Stages 1 and 2; Qualifying Work Experience (QWE);

• still be able to show that you are of satisfactory character and suitability

Individuals are free to choose the training they need to pass the assessments that will prepare them for practice that best suits their talents and learning requirements.

It was initially hoped that the SQE would cut the cost of entry into the profession. However, one of the UK’s largest law schools recently announced that it could cost up to £30,000 for non-law graduates to complete a law conversion course before embarking on the LLM Legal Practice course.

• The LLM will prepare students for both elements of the SQE, could cost between £12,900 and £17,500;

• Non-law graduates are advised to complete a law conversion course that could cost between £9,850 and £15,00;

• Tuition fees does not cover the cost of sitting the SQE of £3,980 that is payable to the SRA.

These costs mean that a UK non-law graduate could pay up to £30,000, whereas the current costs for aspiring solicitors who wish to take the law conversion course and the legal Practice Course in London is somewhere in the region of £29,750 but less in the provinces.

Students are advised to shop around because the cost of the SQE will vary by each provider. However, one must question the rationale behind the changes from the current route into the profession.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY ON 8TH MARCH 2021

The UN has announced that the theme for International Women’s Day 2021 is: “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world”. The focus will include the full and effective participation of women in decision making; public life; elimination of violence; achieving gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.

It is widely accepted that women bring different experiences, perspectives and skills to the table. The following women have been recognised for their decisive, effective and swift response to COVID-19. Whilst at the same time providing fact-based public health information to their citizens laced with compassion. I would like to shine the spotlight on some of these famous female world leaders:

Sahle-Work Zwewde is the current President of Ethiopia and the first woman to hold the office;

Sanna Marin is a Finnish politician and has been Prime Minster of Finland since December 2019;

Angela Merkel has been serving as Chancellor of Germany since 2005;

Jacinda Ardern has been serving as the 40th Prime Minster of New Zealand and leader of the Labour Party since 2017;

Zuzana Caputova is the first woman to hold the office of President in Slovakia, as well as the youngest president in its history;

Nicola Surgeon is the First Minster of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party since 2014;

Kamala Harris is the first female Vice President in U.S. history since January 2021.

Let’s come together to celebrate female achievements on International Women’s Day!

THE LEGAL DIGITAL WORKSPACE: FROM ENABLEMENT TO OPTIMISATION

At the beginning of 2020, most businesses’ remote working procedures were thrown well and truly into the spotlight. Law firms were no exception and it quickly became clear that some were far more prepared than others. The spectrum of preparedness ranged from digital, modern law firms already well equipped to work remotely, to those completely tied to physical offices and unable to work at all.

However, most firms fell into the middle of this range, whereby an employee could work from home, but by no means was their digital workspace optimised for productivity, collaboration or responsiveness. With many firms unable to complete even the most basic of tasks, such as transferring client calls.

Many law firm employees were also faced with a disjointed and cumbersome user experience while working remotely. In a poorly optimised digital workspace it's common for users to have to switch between their local machine and cloud session to carry out simple tasks. Such as accessing their PMS, CMS or DMS, using Microsoft tooling such as Teams and making the video calls which have become so vital to effective remote working.

This is in complete contrast to an employee’s personal experience of technology - where they can switch seamlessly between their devices and complete a task wherever and whenever they want to. And, if any of their devices break or run out of battery, it’s fast and easy for them to switch to another one and pick up where they left off - just as it would be if they were replacing their iPhone, for example.

In most law firm’s corporate technology systems, users will often have to run several different devices such as a laptop or desktop, their tablet and phone separately - with some applications and tools accessible on one, but not the other. This lack of integration simply makes the delivery of legal work harder to do, leaving workers frustrated, wasting valuable billable time, and often exposing the firm to major security risks - as users bypass standard operating procedures in desperation to make their day-to-day work less taxing. But the impact of this fragmented user experience goes further still. Staff who are held back by poorly coordinated technology will not only find it harder to deliver client outcomes, they will also be unhappier and left feeling unfulfilled in their work - and therefore more likely to move elsewhere. The impact of poor user experience on staff morale shouldn’t be underestimated. Especially as the prospect of increased remote working opens talented employees to a much wider pool of potential employers, making retention of staff all the more difficult.

So how can you move from enablement to optimisation of your legal digital workspace?

The first step is focusing on the outcomes you want to achieve. Ask yourself; what kind of IT experience do I want for my employees? Once those outcomes have been defined you can look at your current IT solution to discover if it is capable of supporting you in achieving your objectives. The vast majority of IT solutions are not capable of achieving the optimised environment many aspire to have. So in many cases a fundamental change in strategy - and in the IT infrastructure that supports it - is often required.

You’re also likely to require help in achieving these goals - especially from your IT partners. It’s therefore more important than ever that law firms look for providers who can facilitate a fully integrated, optimised digital workspace for all of their employees. This means the ability to collaborate through video, phone and any practice management/document management systems within the same secure virtual session. It means providing for different user personas with different profiles and different levels of access to applications. And it means enabling and supporting the ‘ultra-mobile’ worker, who can access everything they need from any laptop, smartphone or tablet at any given time.

Digital workspaces should not be seen as a single technology. Instead, it should be viewed as an ecosystem of technologies, practices, people, places and services that collectively help people work together more effectively, strengthens corporate culture, improves job satisfaction and engages staff to ultimately help businesses be more successful.

We all know that COVID-19 is changing the world of work long-term, even if it’s not precisely clear how at this moment in time. But what we do know is that client and user experiences will both remain critical to the success of businesses in the legal sector, and that the seamless flexibility of cloud-based digital workspaces will be a cornerstone of that success. The firms that embrace it fully - and implement it right, in partnership with an expert provider - will gain a clear advantage in the marketplace.