7th February 2012

Developing Senior Associates' Business Acumen

Positively Legal® is a key provider to Addleshaw Goddard's training and development programme for senior associates.

Jim Hever, who heads the firm's Client Development Centre, gives his views:

"The firm was concerned to provide experiential business creation training for our senior associates. Because senior associates are not directly responsible for client accounts, developing business creation skills is particularly difficult.

To help us in this challenge we turned to a number of external providers and chose Positively Legal®. This was because Murray Mathieson has an enviable track record as an in house lawyer and exceptional communication and business partnering skills. Murray worked with our own development team to design and deliver a bespoke programme that was described by a number of partners as the best business training they had ever seen.

The training process used Positively Legal®'s Spectacular Growth™ case study tool to provide a simulated experience of pitching to 3 senior executives, including the Head of Legal, in a FTSE 350 company. Murray involved partners in playing the client role and provided a briefing that was extraordinarily thorough and robust. Partners involved described the experience as surprising in enabling them to "become" the client.

Participating associates heard first hand what the world of the in house lawyer is like and how senior counsel decides on which firms they instruct. They were given the tools of business analysis by which they were able to identify the critical success factors for the client to whom they would pitch. They faced the challenge of matching the firm's capabilities to these success factors and enabling the client company achieve its strategic goals. At every step Positively Legal® provided the tools that built their competence.

Associates had to work in teams with each scored by peers on their team contribution. Teams were given the decision criteria by which the law firms would be selected and had to prepare for a full blown pitch accordingly. Positively Legal® used video to record and critically review each pitch. In addition, teams watched and reviewed the pitches of other teams thereby enhancing the learning significantly, and enabling people to appreciate that there is a variety of ways to approach a pitch opportunity. Feedback was provided by Murray and the partners playing the client roles. Each associate identified his/her strengths and weaknesses and was required to formulate two development objectives to be incorporated in their subsequent performance review.

Evaluations of the programme by associates were generally in the categories of "Excellent" and "Very Good" with many asking for a follow-up programme with Murray himself. His credibility as an in house lawyer was greatly augmented by exceptional training skills including a solid dose of refreshing Scottish humour.

We believe that Positively Legal® under Murray Mathieson's direction provided an exceptional development opportunity for our senior associates. We have retained them to continue their excellent work with us."

Jim Hever, Head of Client Development Centre, Addleshaw Goddard