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O shaped: People and business SKILLS
In today’s legal services market, it is imperative that lawyers develop skills which enable them to build stronger relationships, and create value for both their organisation and their clients. The College of Legal Practice has partnered with the O Shaped Lawyer to offer a unique, practical and highly flexible course focusing on the O Shaped principles.
Leading national firms such as Browne Jacobson and Clarke Wilmott are already training their future solicitors using this unique course, alongside SQE preparation, to highlight the importance of the O Shaped attributes in their junior employees.
The O Shaped: People and Business Skills course
With our O Shaped Skills course you can expect:
Learning Structure
What do students study?
There are nine units in the module:
- Introduction: Introduction to module and the O Shaped Mindset and Attributes
- Navigating the professional work environment: Understanding the workplace and building relationships
- Communicating effectively: Covering feedback, adaptability and what great communication looks like
- Facilitating client service: Includes assessing and responding to client needs, and applying O Shaped attributes to client advice and relationships
- Developing a commercial mindset: concept and development of commercial awareness to enable value creation for a client.
- Law firm economics: For both suppliers and buyers of legal services. Recognise the key levers and role in law firm profitability, alternative models for legal services, and how to create value for the firm and clients.
- Legal technology and innovation in legal practice: Understanding the use of technology in legal practice to create value for clients and the increasingly important role of innovation in the delivery of legal services.
8. Creating your personal brand and networking: Applying O Shaped Attributes for using social media to develop personal brand and improving your networking strategy
9. Developing leadership skills: Evaluate leadership concepts and role of leadership in law, including developing O Shaped mindset and attributes to appreciate the importance of effective leadership
Guided learning
The module is fully online, with all the materials required on the College’s learning portal.
Students will be guided through the learning for each unit in the following way:
- Introduction to the unit and O Shaped competencies through audio-visual and written resources
- Self-assessment tasks that require reflection and analysis of the topic in the context of the legal workplace. The tasks include short questions, analysis and reflections and scenarios.
- Submission of assignments that reflect and analyse scenarios that demonstrate their understanding of the application of O Shaped behaviours
- Meetings with their supervisor at specific points across the module for feedback and reflection.
At the end of the module, students submit reflective journal and scenario analyses, and reflective analyses with revised submission outputs for assessment.
Course details
Who is it for?
Junior legal professionals, including aspiring and newly qualified solicitors, and those already working in a professional services environment.
This course is suitable for a wide range of employees and can be taken across your teams to start to embed a O Shaped wide culture in the organisation.
Admissions criteria:
- UK undergraduate degree or equivalent qualification or experience
- If English isn’t your first language, English language qualifications equivalent to IELTS at level 6.5 overall with a minimum of 6 in each component (writing, listening, speaking, reading). You can be exempt from this requirement if you have a qualification which is equivalent to a UK undergraduate degree which was taught in English. Please refer to our Admissions Guidance for full entry criteria details.
Assessment
A portfolio comprising three task submissions, a reflective learning journal and scenario analyses, and a 1,500 word reflective analysis.
Credits for LLM in Legal Practice
30 at FHEQ Level 7
Course options:
- Full-time 9-week course: 30-35 hours of study per week.
- Part-time 18-week course: 15-20 hours of study per week.
- Part-time 6-month course: 8 hours of study per week.
- Part-time 12-month course: 4 hours of study per week
Modules can be taken separately or as part of an LLM in Legal Practice.
From August 2024, the number of number of credits and length of courses have changed, based on student feedback.
Price:
2024 courses: £1,150
A deposit is required to secure a place, please see the fee schedule for details.
Timing
Courses are running multiple times a year.
Click here to see schedule for course and all O Shaped Skills timings
How to apply:
Applications are open for modules.
“The transition from University into full time work is something that I wasn't prepared for. This course reminded me of writing simply, alongside managing stakeholders emotions and expectations.” “I particularly enjoyed the tips on being empathetic and building rapport with colleagues/clients very early on….it is a skill that I will take forward for the rest of my career.”
Student Feedback
In June 2022, The College tested two units with 14 junior legal professionals at different early stages in their career, this is what they had to say:
-
93% found the learning portal easy to understand and use
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86% found the learning activities and tasks aligned to the learning outcomes for the unit
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86% found the 1-2-1 supervision and feedback helpful
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93% would recommend the O shaped skills module to others
After taking the pilot course, the participants provided excellent feedback, they:
- Enjoyed the range of resources and activities and valued the written feedback and the feedback in the 121 meeting
- Recognised a strong link between their learning and reflection and how this enabled them to meet the learning outcomes
- All recognised how developing an O shaped mind-set, and O shaped skills and attributes could help them in their own career
Based on the student feedback the team are have made the minor improvements to communications, captions and task instructions necessary to further enhance the learning experience.
Student Testimonials
In this video one of the College's students, Mohammed Esa, a Legal Director at Sandstone Legal, shares with us his experience of studying the College's O Shaped Skills Module.
Meet Ruth
"I’m Ruth, and I’m a trainee solicitor with Clarke Willmott, the first module that I took with The College of Legal Practice, was their ‘O Shaped Skills’ module. There were a lot of elements I enjoyed about the course. There was a real focus on documenting skills progress through training logs, which I felt helped me reflect on what I’ve learned and how I can apply this to my practice. The course also kept things modern, with reference to current legal technologies and the increasing instances of lawyers offering business-focused advice. It felt up-to-date and relevant to a solicitor’s training in 2023."
Looking for a course for your employees?
Interested in taking our courses yourself?
A O SHAPED APPROACH CAN:
Drive business growth
Build stronger teams
Future-proof your organisation
Use SQE as an opportunity
The definition of success is changing in the legal landscape.
To be successful, legal services need lawyers who are not only highly knowledgeable and educated in law, but individuals who can demonstrate a broad range of human and business skills to enable them to best service their clients’ needs. To understand customer centricity, to innovate and to create value for your clients and customers - lawyers need to be well rounded – or O Shaped.
What do we mean by this?
- An O Shaped lawyer brings value to customers through an optimistic mindset, originality and strong relationship building.
- An O Shaped lawyer is self-aware and advocates for diversity, good mental health and innovation.
- An O Shaped lawyer sees opportunities, drives their business forward, and has a constant desire to learn.
- The O Shaped Skills course with The College of Legal Practice is the only course specifically designed around these real-world principles - helping junior lawyers to drive business success by putting people and clients first.
We've worked closely with Dan Kayne (Founder of the O Shaped Lawyer) and experienced GCs to develop a unique practical and skills-focused course that covers all the O Shaped competencies at a Masters standard. It is flexible and online by design, so working legal professionals can study alongside their day jobs.
Get ready for new skills for a new world. Find out more about our O Shaped Skills training today.
Dan Kayne: Founder of the O Shaped Lawyer
Dan’s experience as General Counsel for the Regions team at Network Rail drove his desire to advocate for the importance of a holistic approach to legal success – encompassing both technical excellence and genuine value.
We have partnered with Dan Kayne and the O Shaped Lawyer to ensure that the course we are offering is specifically designed around the core O Shaped principles. Working together, we hope to provide a platform for students to apply their legal knowledge to real world client scenarios - setting them up for confidently tackling future challenges.
"When O Shaped started as a movement back in 2019, we always felt the modernisation of legal education was an essential step in creating a more progressive profession and could set the next generation of lawyers up for a successful career in an increasingly complex and ever-changing legal landscape."
Dan Kayne, Founder of the O Shaped Lawyer