City of Glasgow College and Africa Legal have pooled their skills and are proud to launch the project management series for lawyers. City of Glasgow College believes in innovative approaches to teaching and learning, and is sure that these three 90-minute, self-paced courses will provide invaluable skills to the modern lawyer who is expected to be able to communicate well, manage projects’ budgets and make strategic decisions about their firm.
“City of Glasgow College is committed to fostering excellence and delivering professional training to produce tomorrow’s solutions today,” said Carla Gethin, Director Business Partnerships at City of Glasgow College. “This new suite of training directly reflects the competencies that are needed by the profession. On completion of these courses of training, participants will have developed the critical skills to enable them to work effectively with clients and undertake appropriate case progression to achieve the best possible outcomes for each client.”
The three courses are:
1) Communication Strategies for Lawyers
Lawyers need to be able to communicate effectively to attract clients to the firm and to develop long-lasting relationships with them. Most junior lawyers have a solid foundation of technical skills to achieve clients’ desired legal outcomes, but you need more than that. Good communication skills that lead to enduring relationships can set you apart from the rest.
This course will use real-world African case studies to help participants evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their communication methods and strategies, understand the importance of a defined communication strategy, develop better communication strategies and deepen relationships with clients.
2) Project Management: Managing Project Budgets
Clients expect their legal partners to be able to offer all the services they need as cost-effectively and efficiently as possible. Keeping a clear record of the costs of specific projects and ensuring that your practice sticks to original costing estimates is critical in building long-lasting client relationships, as well as in running your firm as efficiently as possible.
Students on this course will learn to understand the foundations of a working budget; evaluate some potentially problematic assumptions common in project planning; create well considered, accurate budget plans for each legal project; and analyse some of the root causes of variations between project budgets and the true project costs, as well as how to address them in practice.
You will also be provided with a number of downloadable tools, templates and guidelines that you can use in practice to plan budgets and monitor them.
3) Structuring Firm Strategy
All law firms should be looking to grow their business and enhance their footprint in what is an increasingly competitive market, but each firm is different, and growth strategies that have proved successful for one firm may not be suitable for another.
This course will explore the strategic planning tools that can assist you in unlocking the strategic growth of your business in the short-, medium- and long-term. Downloadable templates and strategic thinking methodologies will enable students to begin to develop the foundations of their own process in order to grow their business.
“One of the biggest things we are hearing from our clients in Africa is the need for professional skills development and a true understanding of how to manage projects and communicate as lawyers,” said Scott Cowan, co-founder at Africa Legal. “Our partnership with the team at City of Glasgow College, a result of our partnership with SABA (Scottish Africa Business Association), has resulted in a series of affordable, self-paced online training modules that will equip our community for the ever changing African legal market.”
The courses will open on 24 February 2022. To pre-register and receive a 20% discount click here
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