Andrea Spears discusses the differences between academic life and legal practice and how BARBRI aims to bridge this gap
In the fast-paced and competitive world of law, junior lawyers looking to get ahead will need more than just legal know-how. Andrea Spears is part of a team at BARBRI developing skills training courses which aim to bridge the gap between academic study and legal practice. BARBRI launched its Legal Life Skills courses earlier this year, focusing on essential practical skills for a successful law career that are not covered by the SQE.
Spears initially studied international business at university before completing a law conversion and qualifying at a commercial law firm. With eight years of experience as a corporate M&A lawyer in private practice and time spent working in-house for a global manufacturing company, she brings diverse insights from the legal profession. Later, she pivoted to legal education, creating a customised LPC course for a Magic Circle firm. Now a learning and development consultant with extensive experience in both face to face and virtual skills training and professional development, Spears focuses at BARBRI on preparing students for success in the workplace beyond the SQE.
I kick off our conversation by asking Spears about the skills that trainee solicitors and junior lawyers overlook as they begin their careers. “I would say business writing,” she responds.
“When you get into practice, you don’t immediately draft contracts or advise clients – the tasks that your formal training has prepared you for,” she says. “You’re much more likely to start off writing emails and legal research notes. It is these things that many trainees aren’t prepared for.”
Reflecting on her own experience as a trainee solicitor, as well as those she has supervised, she continues: “For many of us before we enter the workplace, our experience of writing has been academic. This means that we write to demonstrate our knowledge and understanding of a topic.” Recognising the new audience you’re writing for, busy professionals, is essential to effective business writing, Spears explains: “Whether writing for colleagues or clients, your audience is short on time—they want writing that’s succinct, clear, and sharp.”
Spears also stresses the importance of commercial awareness and understanding business. “If you want to get on, just being a good technical lawyer is not going to cut it,” she explains. “While in education, our focus is on finding the best legal solution to a problem, but this isn’t always what clients are looking for. For our clients, they have a business opportunity or challenge, which has a legal aspect to it. Junior lawyers need to learn to balance their technical legal knowledge with an understanding of commercial risk to help their clients strike a balance between achieving their business goals and ensuring their client’s don’t take undue legal risk.”
For those training in private practice, it is equally important to understand your law firm as a business. “You need to apply that commercial mindset to the business you work for, understanding your role within the firm,” Spears says. “I went into my legal career thinking that my role was to get better at law.” This mindset is shared by many trainees eager to build their technical legal knowledge. However, Spears says “the firm is going to expect something back, and are looking for you to make a valuable contribution to the business You therefore need to start thinking beyond legal skills and start building solid business development skills, be those networking or presentation skills, in order to contribute.”
The final set of skills Spears identifies are management skills. “This often comes down to time and stress management,” she says. Again, she emphasises the disconnect that exists between student life and life in a law firm. “It is easy to think that you have cracked time management because you have been balancing university work with a part-time job. However, in an office environment, your time isn’t necessarily your own. You will have that last-minute meeting or an urgent call which disrupts your schedule.” In order to really thrive as a trainee or junior lawyer, you will need to do more than just complete your tasks, says Spears. “It’s about managing your time in such a way that you don’t undersell yourself by producing work that is less than top quality due to stress and time constraints.”
As the legal industry evolves and the growth of legal tech continues, all these skills are only becoming more important. “When I was a trainee, much of our work involved routine document and time intensive tasks which are now taken care of by legal technology,” she says. From Spears’ perspective, this will have a positive effect on junior lawyers. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for those getting into the profession,” Spears tells me, adding, “You will get more client-facing work which will push you to that next level quicker. The flipside is that whilst these skills have always been important in the profession, to cope with this more client focused work, aspiring lawyers will need to be prepared: “law firms are going to be looking for these legal life skills more and more when they are recruiting.”
So how do BARBRI’s Legal Life Skills courses support those looking to develop these crucial skills? “Many young lawyers will be told which skills they lack, but they are rarely told how to develop them,” Spears responds. “These courses give you the practical tools to build key skills.” The courses are aimed at anyone looking to get into the legal profession: “This could be trainees and paralegals or aspiring trainees and paralegals who want to be practiced in these skills when they get through the door on day one,” Spears says. But they are also vital to junior lawyers in practice who want to accelerate the development of their existing skills. The courses were developed by the BARBRI team in consultation with lawyers, trainees, paralegals, clients and learning and development specialists working in law firms. “It was important to get a balanced view on the skills junior lawyers need as well as what is reasonable to expect from lawyers at this stage,” Spears reflects.
Additionally, these online courses can be completed in short bitesize chunks on your own timetable. “The days of going out for a full day of training are behind us because of the cost and time involved,” Spears explains. “We also find that a day in a training room doesn’t work as effectively when it comes to learning and development – there’s only so much a person can take in at a time, especially when the training is scheduled for a specific day where they have other demands on their time.” The online content is complemented with live masterclasses led by a subject matter expert during which students can discuss and reflect on what they’ve learnt and develop even more skills. “Participating in a live session where you can talk and ask questions is key for building confidence,” Spears says.
To wrap up our discussion, I ask Spears how these skills, which are so important for lawyers to develop at the start of their careers, pave the way for long-term career growth. “Based on my experience, both in private practice and in-house, is that lawyers never stop learning”, she responds. “You will be continually building your skills throughout your career. In order to do this, you need a firm foundation — that’s where these skills come in. If you start off your career understanding the need for these critical skills and how to develop them, you will build a solid career which won’t crumble later down the line due to weak foundations,” she concludes.
Find out more from BARBRI about employability skills at ‘Supercharge your CV: essential skills for aspiring solicitors — with BARBRI’, a virtual student event taking place TOMORROW (Thursday, 31 October). Apply now to attend.
