Gemma Ellison, Head of Culture & Employee Engagement who created the Jackson Lees Training Academy, asked me a very difficult question last week. 

"What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?"

I have found that very difficult to answer. 

I remember a University friend saying that to be a good conversationalist, you needed to be interested in and respond to the words of the other people rather than just talk about you and your own experiences. He was dead right.

When engaged in conversation I was often only respond with an experience of my own.  The comment was a light bulb moment and helped me to be better at engaging with others. However, I admit that I am still better at discussing ‘important’ issues than engaging in what might be disparagingly be described by some as ‘small talk’.

My grandmother probably had as much influence on my attitudes as anyone. Her philosophy, expressed in a diary which I still have, said this in 1950:

to begin each day unafraid, determined to do one’s best, knowing love is all around us. We choose which way to take being considerate or selfish, giving or grabbing.

As a piece of advice, I find that this resonates with me. It’s an attitude to life that makes sense to me and is a spur to try to do the right things day by day.

It is encouraging as well as challenging, and I hope it is what I have tried to do throughout my life.

Many times you fail to live up to this and sometimes you say and do things which can be discouraging and negative, but there is always another day to make amends and try again.

There is no point dwelling on the past, rather look forward and try again. Perhaps you can learn from the mistakes of yesterday. The best way to achieve this is by learning from our past.

To celebrate its first birthday, the Jackson Lees Training Academy is holding a ‘LearnFest’ this week. This is how Gemma has sold it to our team: 

LearnFest is what it says on the tin - a festival of learning! We are celebrating one year of the Training Academy and the learning culture that we are creating here at the Jackson Lees Group. Creating an environment which encourages curiosity and lifelong learning will help to support each of us and our business to be the best we can be. What we learn at work can help us in our daily lives and what we teach ourselves outside of the business helps to make us better at our jobs; LearnFest is looking across these boundaries with a broad range of topics. We’d love every single one of you to get involved; whether you’ve been to every session of the Academy or none, LearnFest will have something for you.

What lawyers need to be trained in is very different now from what it was when I qualified. 

Clients do not come to see you to know what the law is.  They, too, can go online and find out for themselves. How to apply the law to solve the client’s problem is the expertise that we need to have nowadays.

To tackle this approach, we first need to understand the context of the issue raised. For instance, if it is a problem arising out of business then we need to understand about business; if it is a family problem we need to have an understanding of families. 

Our lawyers need to understand people and have empathy with the human condition. All this comes with experience of handling similar situations. It also involves an understanding of human nature and the psychology of the client who has consulted us.

It also helps if we know why we are doing what we do, and the core of our motivation lies in the fact that we really care about helping the client in the best way we can.

To aid this, the LearnFest programme for our lawyers includes the history of our practice and its work for justice, a course on empowerment and one on resilience, an innovation hub, as well as looking at issues through the eyes of a client.

Our lawyers need to be self-confident and strong, think outside the box, and know that the reason they are lawyers is not at odds with the desire to put clients first. These are not easy skills to acquire but I hope it will lead to a different way of being a lawyer.

The past is behind us and a new day is dawning where we can do things a bit differently - or so my grandmother believed!