Working to advantage

Practising as a lawyer is not easy. We do a difficult job, often working to excessively restrictive timescales and with incomplete information. Some clients come to us in a distressed state, and we must be able to handle a constant level of stress (and emotions). We care about what they do; as a result, when an error occurs, we take it to heart. We need to develop mechanisms that allow us to learn from it and focus on preventing its re-occurrence. Our daily practice is the core and most important source of our professional learning and career progression, yet it often passes by unnoticed and undervalued.

With continuing pressure on training budgets, work-based learning is free, in that it arises out of people doing what they are paid to do. Raising its profile can help to improve people’s morale and motivation by allowing them to recognise that they are increasing their skills and knowledge. Too often, everyone is so bogged down in the doing that they fail to see this. In addition, when people constantly focus on what is going wrong, how worried they are about their future, and how negative relationships are becoming, they are unable to see the positives that do exist.

Why is it so important?

There are a number of reasons why I advocate the importance of work-based learning for professionals in particular. First of all, professional practice requires the blending of knowledge, skills and attitudes. These cannot be learned in isolation or in silos of “education”, as they need to be applied so as to make sense and to enable us to learn to make good choices. To learn effectively, we must have the opportunity to observe more experienced practitioners do their job and be able to identify what is happening below the surface of their overt behaviour.

Secondly, standards of professional practice are difficult to make absolute. Each client situation is different and context-specific. As a result, we can only assess the standard of our own performance by directly observing and comparing ourselves against our peers and seniors and by what our clients directly experience. This is one reason why we find external regulation difficult.

Thirdly, we need to develop our sense of belonging to a profession, and that can only be achieved by working alongside other practitioners. We need to find out how well we are doing and what areas we need to develop. Trainees in particular have to learn to “fit in”, how to behave and what language to employ.

And lastly, recognising its value will help us deal with market pressures to reduce operational costs and change the way we work. External training budgets have been cut in recent years in most organisations. This will have had a negative effect on morale and motivation, with people feeling that they are not able to develop new skills or progress their careers. Yet, at the same time, most professional organisations are being asked to adapt their service delivery. People cannot cope with considerable change without being able to learn, and they will not be willing to learn in an environment where they are constantly watching their backs, in case they or their department are the next to be axed. So if we can reinforce both the value and importance of work-based learning, people will feel more able to learn and respond positively to being asked to change or take on new roles.

For people to learn, they must be able to admit that they want to know more about something. This should be seen as a positive admission rather than one of failure. With so much pressure at the moment on job security it is often difficult for people to say that they need help, as this can be interpreted as meaning that they are not up to their current role. Working long hours under considerable time constraints results in tiredness and sometimes mistakes. These mistakes need to be put into context and assessed as to whether simply oversight or an example of a gap in knowledge or skills.

Lawyers tend to look to allocate blame when things go wrong: after all, that is what we have been trained to do. We also operate in a “win or lose” orientation where success or failure can be regarded as measures of our personal performance. This can result in a blame culture across the firm as a whole, with resultant implications for encouraging people to make the most of work-based learning. Individuals are unlikely to volunteer to move out of their comfort zone and take on new responsibilities if they think they risk being censured for going through a learning curve. Nor will they willingly spend time helping and supporting other people to learn if no one else in the firm does the same.

Being open to learning

Let us look in more detail at how individuals can make the most of their work-based learning.

Each of us has to be keen to improve, and as a result, take personal charge of our own development, making it a priority to review every six months or so what we have learned and identify what went well and why. When a mistake occurs, we must be willing to acknowledge it and talk to someone to help put it into perspective. The most important aspect is not to dwell on it but to do something about fixing it. If our organisation has a formal appraisal or review process, we should prepare for it properly, be clear about what we want to achieve and offer specific examples of what we have done well. Where people give us feedback on our performance, we must try to listen to this as objectively as possible and respond to it constructively rather than defensively. Overall, we should be open-minded about opportunities that will allow us to develop our knowledge, skills and abilities.

In summary, individuals must be:

• keen to learn and improve;
• self-aware and prepared to take personal responsibility for making improvements;
• committed to doing good quality work;
• good at probing for information and clarification;
• able to cope with making mistakes and willing to ask for help;
• prepared to hear feedback on performance and respond to it constructively;
• honest and act with integrity.

Rules for organisations

Organisations also have specific responsibilities to ensure that everyone makes the most of work-based learning. Senior people in particular have a direct impact on the culture of their firms and have to ensure that everyone is allowed to learn. When files go well, there should always be a project debrief to discuss why this happened and what aspects of this success can be applied to other projects or client work. When things go off track, this should not turn into a witch hunt to discover who made a mistake, but rather be dealt with as objectively as possible.

Changes of roles should be promoted in such a way as people feel that these will be a positive experience, and are able to try out new skills and seek out advice and constructive feedback. Too often lawyers are overly critical and forget the impact that a throwaway remark can have on people’s willingness to approach them.

Any formal appraisal and review processes should be used properly and not merely be there for appearances’ sake. They should allow people to have a genuine discussion at least once a year to look back on what they have learned and what aspects of their practice they would like to improve on. Senior people should not cancel these at short notice, as it gives a particular message about how important they perceive them to be. They should prepare fully for them, and if criticising individual performance, should, in addition to having particular examples of the problem, have solutions to offer.

Senior people can be perceived as “scary” and sometimes have a tendency to make a glib remark that can damage a more junior person’s confidence. It is important to remember that, and when they comment on someone else’s performance, they need to be able to:

• be tolerant when people are trying new things out;
• put themselves in the other person’s shoes, remembering what it was like when they were learning;
• be patient and listen to the other person’s concerns;
• give specific examples rather than making generalised comments;
• be constructive and offer solutions and support.

Value for money

Work-based learning offers excellent value for money for individuals and organisations to make improvements to everyday practice and the way people perform.

It is important to look positively at the opportunities that arise every day to identify what went well and what went badly. Feedback should be seen as the norm and dealt with in an objective way, rather than focusing on individual “failures”. Operating a blame culture will stifle improvements in quality of service to clients and will not encourage people to try out new things.

Career progression is an important driver for everyone, and working with and learning from our clients allows us to improve what we do and build our long-term success.