Essential Soft Skills for Lawyers
What They Are and How to Develop Them
Samenvatting
This Special Report offers a research-based view into the importance of soft skills for modern lawyers and how law firms develop essential soft skills – whether to comply with SRA rules, to lead productive teams, to provide the best service to clients or to grow their practice.
Through interviews with lawyers, leaders and human resource professionals at large and small firms, the report provides an overview of the essential soft skills required by modern lawyers, competency frameworks and insights into how best to develop them and guidance on some of the essential soft skills required.
Interpersonal, emotional intelligence, communication, learning, adaptability, problem-solving, negotiation, team management, leadership and business development are amongst the soft skills explored for high-performing lawyers.
This report is the guide to developing the skills needed to get ahead and stay ahead in your legal career.
Trefwoorden
Specificaties
Inhoudsopgave
I. Introduction
II. What do we mean by ‘soft skills?’
1. Technical legal and technology skills
2. Is it practical intelligence?
3. Is it commerciality?
4. Are they emotional or people skills?
5. Are they attributes?
III. The importance of soft skills for lawyers
1. World Economic Forum’s Future of Work report
2. Management experts
3. Client perspective
4. Solicitors Regulation Authority
5. Legal sector commentators
6. Commercial and trusted advisers
7. T-shaped lawyers
8. O-shaped lawyers
9. The Delta Model
IV. Emotional intelligence for lawyers
1. What is emotional intelligence?
2. Client views on emotional intelligence in lawyers
3. The link between confidence and perfectionism
4. Stress, resilience and
5. Decision making
6. High-performance environment
V. Methods of developing lawyer soft skills
1. Approaches to training and
2. Law Society research
3. How to promote learning and different learning styles
4. Competency frameworks
5. Measuring the effectiveness of training
6. Awards for soft skills development
VI. The range of soft skills required by lawyers
1. Essential soft skills for lawyers
2. Lawyer qualities and attributes
VII. Five essential soft skills for lawyers
1. Personal skills
2. Communication skills
3. Building relationships
4. Leadership – managing a team
5. Business development – marketing, selling and referrer management
VIII. Soft skills in other professions
1. Solicitors Regulation
2. Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales
3. Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
IX. Concluding observations
X. Signposts to other learning resources
1. Recommended books
2. Training organisations
Appendix I. Illustrative competency dictionary and framework
Appendix II. Example RICS mandatory competency – communications and negotiation
Notes
About the author
About Globe Law and Business
