Training and Development

We are accredited Investors in People – read on to find out more about our proactive approach to colleagues' development.

As an organisation that is accredited by Investors in People to Platinum standard, we are committed to delivering high quality and effective professional development for all colleagues. 

Learning and development opportunities are informed by a rigorous training needs analysis exercise undertaken annually by the HR team. We are pleased to offer a broad range of high quality learning and development courses for all colleagues in areas such as technical skills; soft and leadership skills; IT; and risk and compliance. We support group courses delivered by both internal and external speakers as well as a range of accessible webinars and online training resources, which can be accessed at a time convenient to colleagues. 

In addition to internal and external training courses, we provide colleagues with challenging work assignments, exposure to projects supported by our Smarter Working team and, on occasion, secondments to our clients. We firmly believe these opportunities help our colleagues develop the broad range of skills necessary to become a successful lawyer, as well as providing room for professional stretch and development in their chosen field.

Investors in People and Investors in Young People

We are recognised as a Platinum-accredited Investor in People (IIP) and a Platinum-accredited Investor in Young People (IIYP). These are the highest accreditations attainable under the Investors in People accreditation scheme. 
We are committed to being an employer of choice and demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the development of our colleagues by:

  • developing learning strategies aligned to the overall firm strategy;
  • ensuring all learning and development activities are designed to improve the performance of colleagues and the firm; and
  • evaluating the impact of all learning and development activities.

We have a tailored young person’s strategy, which aims to recruit, develop and retain young people at the firm. The aim is to ensure young people feel fully engaged and cultivate a sense of belonging. The strategy considers different areas of a young person’s journey within the firm, including:

  • attraction and recruitment;
  • learning;
  • support and guidance;
  • development;
  • impact; and
  • providing a voice for young people.

Click below to find out more about some of our tailored in-house programmes:

 

This two-day course is directed at solicitors with up to three years’ post-qualified experience (PQE). The programme aims to provide each participant with the skills required to carry out their existing role to a very high standard, with a view to providing a solid basis for career development. The course includes workshops dedicated to presentations skills, effective communication, marketing and business development, client relationship management, communications and reputation management, smarter working, project management, understanding and explaining accounts and financial awareness.

We run an annual off-site away day to encourage our Associates and Senior Associates from all UK offices to get together in one central location. This allows peers to get to know one another away from their desks, enhancing communication between practice areas, fostering a sense of camaraderie and encouraging cross-selling of legal services. 

Our Emerging Leaders Programme was launched in 2019 as a two-year leadership development programme offering high quality, individual coaching and interactive group training sessions to delegates from across the business. The programme seeks to ensure colleagues at critical stages in their career path are given every opportunity to develop key skills to unlock their promotion potential.

We are pleased to support various mentoring initiatives for colleagues. We have a well-established mentoring scheme for trainees and, in 2019, we were pleased to launch a firm-wide mentoring scheme, which has now been made available to all colleagues. We have invested in training internal mentors and currently have 22 trained mentors at Partner and Director level. All colleagues are offered the opportunity to engage with a trained mentor as part of their annual review process.