In-House Legal Tip: Upskill Junior Team Members

A common feature of high-performing in-house legal teams is the presence of exceptionally effective junior team members. Does this sound like your legal team? 

The ability to upskill junior legal talent is critical for any legal team seeking to achieve the holy trinity of performance outcomes: productivity, cost management and talent development & retention. 

Traditionally it has been accepted that private practice puts more resources into the development of their legal talent. Indeed the best private practice law firms dedicate huge budgets to the training and retention of their junior talent.  

By contrast, in-house legal departments (“IHL”) often do not have the economies of scale, or institutional structures to recreate such training programs. That said, the development of junior in-house talent is not especially difficult if approached intentionally and pro-actively. 

Each and every team member, especially junior talent, should have a tailored development plan that is actively implemented. This plan should cover a full range of skills – both hard and soft skills. 

Additionally, IHL leaders must be particularly shrewd and proactive when it comes to efficiently capturing the collective know-how of their department and making it available to junior team members via departmental tools.

Some of the best Tools available to IHL to achieve this are: 

1. Clearly documented Group Legal Policy

2. Contracting Playbooks

3. Clause Banks

4. Well maintained Template Library

5. Matter Review Checklists

6. Library of recordings of every training presentation ever attended by your IHL

7. project de-briefing summaries

If you wanted to learn more how in-house legal departments can better leverage their resources (like know how and junior team members) to achieve increased productivity gains – please watch this GLS Legal Ops Masterclass: Leveraging Legal Department Resources 

Ready To Transform Your Legal Team?

Please check out the GLS solutions and know-how resources listed on the right side of this page – they might assist your legal team with the issues explored in this Blog. 

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