Supporting our members to thrive

LawscotTech
We will lead the conversation on legaltech in Scotland through LawscotTech, which brings together the profession, technology providers, academia and other stakeholders including cross-border regulators.

Our new strategy for LawscotTech was launched at the start of 2024 and will run through to 2028. The initiative is driven by four strategic aims, with each having equal priority. Through the strategy we aim to:

• Educate the profession and legal sector on the art of the possible
• Engage with legal and tech communities at home and abroad
• Improve the impact of legaltech
• Contribute to Scotland’s digital economy

LawscotTech was involved in delivering the Law Society’s Legal Technology Conference in 2024 and has continued to engage with stakeholders and been represented at roundtables and conferences both in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK, including Legal Geek, a major legal tech conference.

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Support our members and their teams in practice
We will continually evolve our suite of services and guidance to ensure that they meet the demands of our members, including business resilience, recruitment and retention, use of technology, and health and wellbeing.

In 2023-24 we reviewed eight pieces of Guidance/Advice and Information to ensure that these remained current and useful for our members.

Our commercial team increased our Member Benefit partners from 26 to 37, providing our members with a wider range of support and services and published a new Member Benefit Guide. Our strategic partnership with Mitigo was renewed on improved terms and we brought on a new panel of wealth management providers, replacing the single partnership we had previously with St. James’s Place.

We also produced a new AI Guide in partnership with Wordsmith, which was well received by members. We have also worked with accounting and business adviser AAB on a financial benchmarking exercise, with a report due to be published in 2025.

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CPD & Training
We will build upon our successful programme of continuous professional development (CPD) and training to ensure we are the profession's first choice, by adding new content to our existing hybrid offerings to support both online and in-person learning and development.

Our CPD and Training team continued delivering high quality in-person and online training throughout 2023-24. The Annual Conference was our largest yet, both in terms of delegate attendance and sponsorship income. Over 1400 members registered over the course of the four days, taking advantage of our hybrid format. 

In house annual conference became free of charge to members, and we welcomed over 400 delegates to those online sessions. Legal Tech conference continues to grow, with 10 exhibitors and over 500 members registering in 2024. 

The Society’s EDI Certification Course for Leaders and Managers launched in May 2024.  The team also launched and completed three new Legal Tech Certification Courses in partnership with Hey Legal. A new trauma-informed TCPD module is now a formal part of our TCPD programme, alongside a bespoke inhouse module in conjunction with O Shaped Lawyer. 

We ran our New Partner Practice Management course twice online, and once in-person. Our option in June hosted at the Sheraton hosted 64 new partners. 

Sponsorship income for CPD play an increasingly important part in our planning, helping ensure that members have access to CPD materials without charge and ensuring a more egalitarian system for people across the profession to access development and learning opportunities. 

In total, CPD had direct 8,246 member engagements last year, making it one of the most visible aspects of the Society's work for members. 

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Member engagement
We will build on our existing engagement programme by offering a range of targeted forums for members to share their challenges and concerns with the Society and each other, exploring, in particular, how we better support a sustainable high street profession and champion our growing in-house sector.

During 2023-24 we organised numerous member engagement events, including 16 Lawscot member forums across the country, our annual dinner, Fellows annual lunch, larger firm partner and in-house general counsel leadership lunches, two international trade roundtables, online forums for larger firms and faculty deans, and hosted tables at six formal stakeholder events.

We implemented key areas of our in-house member strategy, in particular focusing on free CPD (In-house Annual Conference / risk management), alongside the launch of an online in-house community platform; and early career support.

As part of our drive to ensure we are providing the right support and services for our members, we commenced a research project to obtain detailed insight on smaller practice units. This project has a quantitative survey element followed by a qualitative in-depth interview which has continued into the next operating year (2024-25).

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Financial Support
We will increase additional income from commercial activity so that we may fund support for the profession without adding unnecessary pressure to core practice fees.

Our commercial income for the last financial year was £1.095m against a budget of £1.080m. This was generated through our well-received CPD training and working with our valued stakeholders and partners across the legal and business communities.

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Wellbeing
We will strive to reduce the stigma around mental health throughout the profession and provide a range of new resources for our member firms and organisations to enable them to support their staff employee wellbeing.

As part of our drive to reduce the stigma around mental health and promote wellbeing we delivered events which attracted 85 delegates on average per quarter, above our target of 75. Themes included: Creating good habits, supporting Gen Z, burnout, understanding depression, Mental Health Awareness Week and considering wellbeing with an LGBTQ+ lens.

We also ran peer support/leadership sessions which unfortunately did not attract desired attendance and we plan to reinvigorate these for 2024/25 by linking with wider equality, diversity and inclusion work.

We rebranded the Lawscot Wellbeing section of our website which now has clearer signposting and updated resources.

We hosted two mental health first aid training sessions, with 10 delegates in February 20245 and 15 in October 2024.

Due to major staffing changes and challenges in the team, certain goals were not met, such as engagement events for students and members in the early stages of their career which were put on hold till 2024-25. However, a new action plan for 2024-2027 has been drafted for Lawscot Wellbeing, to bring engagement back on track and launch several new higher-impact initiatives across the profession. Our future plans mean that although we did not meet all our specific goals in 2023-24, this will not have a lasting impact. A refocus meant work was instead completed in other areas, including drafting our new action plan and launching a new wellbeing champions scheme.  

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The Journal and Lawscot Jobs
We will work with our new partner to refresh the Journal and Lawscot Jobs with a digital first approach that balances the needs of our members with our sustainability goals.

Following the move to a new publisher, Think Publishing, new branding was developed and launched as it moved to a fully digital publication, providing increased flexibility, more regular updates and timely coverage. We have also worked with Think to prepare second phase of development of the Journal which will be carried out in 2024-25.

We carried out a review of the Journal editorial advisory board including its role and remit. Following the review, several new members were appointed, following application. The board is chaired by Murray Etherington, former President (2022-23)

Paralegal Certification Course
In conjunction with Robert Gordon University, we will launch a new qualification for paralegals who are at the start of their careers.

We launched a new qualification for paralegals with Robert Gordon University and ensured promotion of the course to our members and their colleagues throughout the year through a variety of channels, including at conferences and member forums, advertising, and testimonials from this year’s intake. We expect that the course will take at least two or three years to become established as a training route for paralegals and will continue to monitor progress as it develops.