(a) Practical Ethics in which we seek to identify the special problems of conflict, client’s confidentiality, duties to client, to the profession, to the courts and to the public.
(b) Personal Organisation and Time Management in which we seek to identify the competing demands of professional practice and to focus upon strategies designed to ensure that essential deadlines are achieved and effective fee charging arrangements are implemented.
(c ) IT and the Legal Office in which we seek to keep abreast of the electronic revolution but, perhaps more importantly, seek also to separate the wheat from the chaf and avoid unnecessary electronic distraction.
(d) Client Care in which we consider how best to address the needs of individual clients but, in particular, we study the practical ways of avoiding client complaints.
(e) Financial and Commercial Awareness in which we join with an experienced chartered accountant in the study of the interpretation of various sets of practical accounts and to relate these to the requirements of legal practice.
(f) Drafting in which we study the composition of formal legal documentation across the breadth of legal practice from notices of alibi through letters of obligation to Wills and dispositions – not seeking to become instant experts in all of these but rather to establish contact with the main devices of general legal practice.
(g) Legal Writing in which we study the less formal but equally essential composition of letters, memos, pleadings, missives and so on and study some distinctive examples of poor expression taken from suitable anonomysed practical examples – for which we are always on the look out.
(h) Negotiation in which we study practical examples, again across the breadth of legal practice from settling accident claims, adjusting agreements between separating spouses, plea bargaining and other negotiations on the steps of the court and seek to establish underlying guidelines and principles.
(i) Interviewing where we torture trainees on video camera via interview scenarios in which they meet solicitors who adopt the traits of their own worst experiences and inflict them (happily) upon their trainees for their edification – would you like a shot ?
