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The Mini MBA for In-house Lawyers Training Course: face to face & live webinar
Business, commercial, financial and leadership skills to manage and develop a sound and strategically effective in-house legal department
Why you should attend
This inspirational four-day programme uses the latest MBA thinking and techniques to focus on the real and challenging issues that are confronting today’s in-house legal departments.
The expert trainers, from a legal and business background, will share their own experiences from working as in-house lawyers and business managers. They will refer to and explore up-to-the-minute management and leadership methodologies and techniques. By attending this intensive course, you will benefit from their considerable expertise and have time to explore new skills and ways of working under their guidance to ensure you succeed in a demanding role.
This programme also offers a unique networking opportunity to share existing best practice and established industry-wide norms with colleagues from different organisations and countries.
The objectives of this course
As a result of attending this programme, you will be able to:
- Engage with business colleagues when strategic choices are being made
- Review the role and strategy of the in-house legal function
- Define and demonstrate the rationale and value of the legal department to the rest of the organisation
- Achieve better outcomes by applying project management techniques
- Mobilise more effective teamwork within and outside the legal team
- Participate more confidently in discussions involving financial analysis
- Withstand cost cutting pressures by highlighting coherent resource priorities
- Establish strong working relationships with business colleagues in order to influence behaviour and attitudes towards legal issues
- Manage and lead the in-house legal team to high performance
- Access and enhance core leadership management techniques in the context of effective change management
- Pursue the best remuneration options with external law firms and gain value for money from their services
- Examine and understand how successful Heads of Legal have applied a commercial and strategic focus to achieve results
- Measure and boost the performance of the legal team through valuable assessment and coaching
Who should attend?
This course will be particularly beneficial to:
- Heads of legal departments
- Legal affairs directors and managers
- Senior corporate counsel and advisers
- Legal departments CEOs
- Key corporate law team members
- Private practice lawyers seeking a switch to an in-house role
Programme - day 1
Module 1: Business strategy and strategic planning
Your strategy
- Your business has a strategy – do you know what it is?
- Is it taking you where you need to be?
Strategy, tactics and choices
- Definition
- Classic strategy development
- Why do you exist?
- How do you deliver value for others?
- Who are you?
- What performance do you need?
- What is your message?
- Top-down vs bottom-up strategies
Strategies for winning vs strategies for success
- The difference between success and winning and when to focus on each
- Creating strategies for success
- Strategic activity systems
Module 2: Developing your strategy for legal services
- Building the full picture of the need and demands for legal services
- Risk appetite and corporate culture
Selecting and selling the right options for the provision of legal services
- In-house capability decisions
- External providers
- Cost implications
- Practical exercise: Developing a blueprint
Programme - day 2
Module 3: Leading and managing strategic change
Strategy, change and people
- Eight levels of change
- Compelling strategies for everyone to follow
How you experience change
- Change-U
- People types and change
- Leading yourself through change
- Followership through change
- Leading others through change
- Integrating actions, beliefs, cultures and processes to enable change
The change toolkit
- Types of change
- Change readiness assessment
- Stakeholder analysis
- The politics of change
- Communication
- Influence
- Networking
- Success factors
Module 4: Project management and teamwork
The essentials of project management
- Key elements for effective project management
- Overview of basic project management tools
- Practical exercise: Applying the project management approach to your work
Teamwork
- Team roles and composition
- Team membership qualities
- Team leadership qualities
- Dealing with team tensions and non-performance
- Practical exercise: Developing the in-house legal team
Programme - day 3
Module 5: Understanding the business from a financial perspective
The history and the accounts
- All of the jargon around rules and the like
- The main statements and what they tell you
- How to interpret the figures to understand the business issues
- Valuing a business from the accounts – EBITDA etc.
The future and the need for business processes
- The boardroom jargon quiz
- Business plans – why are they needed and how are they prepared?
- The use of budgets and management information to control businesses
- Why cash is king and the need for cash flow forecasts
- Investment decisions explained: net present values, rates of return, payback periods
- Practical exercise: Forecasting cashflow, profit and loss and a balance sheet
Module 6: Managing a budget and external expenditure
Managing fees with external law firms
- Getting the best value
The problems with traditional fee arrangements
- What do law firms want?
- Understanding the cost and the cash flow
Finding ways of operating more creative and ‘winwin’ fee arrangements
- How do you encourage greater efficiency – the use of matter planning and pricing tools
- Fee negotiation – making it more effective and less stressful
- Genuinely creative fee arrangements that help everyone
- Making sure there are no unforeseen surprises on fees
- Getting the engagement letter right
- Practical ways of managing scope creep
Programme - day 4
Module 7: People management and leadership
Understanding and fostering motivation and engagement
- Motivation theory
- Demotivation is easy
- Neutralising negativity and scepticism
- Practical exercise: Performance management scenarios
Emotional intelligence and leadership qualities
- Developing yourself
- As a leader and as a manager
Module 8: Influencing and decision-making
- Analysing stakeholders
- Deciphering cultural differences
- Problem-solving tools and processes
- Decision-making tools and processes
- Practical exercise: Contributing effectively to decision-making
The view from the other side
- Learning from those in-house lawyers who have become business leaders
- What pointers for us does their hindsight provide?
- What best prepared them to be candidates for a business role?
Presenters
Mark Prebble (More...)
Mark Prebble worked for ICI and The BOC Group plc in the UK, and Biogen and SGS in Switzerland during his 21 years as an employed in-house lawyer. He held the positions of General Counsel at SGS and Group Legal Adviser at The BOC Group plc. Since 1998 when he established Lawyers in Business, Mark has worked with in-house legal departments, providing coaching and support for in-house lawyers, wherever located, on management issues, legal department performance and projects involving raising legal awareness. He has written Managing In-house Legal Services for Thorogood Publishing.
Robert Mowbray (More...)
Robert Mowbray is one of the longest standing and most widely known trainers of professionals having worked in and with law, accounting and other organisations for over 25 years. He is renowned as a trainer in things ‘financial’ and has considerable experience of helping lawyers to read financial statements and in helping professional firms to increase profitability through more efficient and effective working practices. Robert was the author of Maximising the Profitability of Law Firms and has trained or consulted with over 400 firms in over 20 countries. He has been voted Trainer of the Year by the Legal Education & Training Group and is the current author of the annual financial benchmarking survey organised by the Law Management Section of the Law Society. The unique experience that Robert has gained puts him in a position to independently and authoritatively help in-house legal departments understand strategic financial management and how they can build effective relationships with external law partners.
Graham Boyd (More...)
Graham Boyd is known for his success in leading people, business, research, strategy and multi-stakeholder dialogue. He integrates hard skills with soft skills, to enable clients to connect the organisation’s purpose and strategy with the behaviours required. Over the past ten years his focus as entrepreneur and business transformation consultant has been on what has recently become known as Teal, or self-managing and deliberately developmental organisations. Graham started his professional life in high energy physics and computing then moved to Procter & Gamble, where he led the successful development of new products and new organisations. He combined complex systems thinking: seeing the whole, the interactions, and the parts and then changing the system for the better to drastically improve their operations in Asia and then in Europe. At P&G he worked globally with the in-house legal team to develop strategic thinking and management skills. Since leaving P&G in 2008 Graham has been an accomplished consultant, trainer and coach, and achieved great success with organisations and teams globally in developing their strategic decision-making skills, and empowering them to link their operations to overall business performance.
Continuing professional development
This course qualifies for the following CPD programmes:
- CPD certificate of attendance: 23.00 hours
Book now
| attend Face to face | attend Live webinar | ||||
| 24-27 Nov 2020, Rembrandt Hotel, London | |||||
| 24-27 Nov 2020 | Rembrandt Hotel, London |
GBP 2,199.00 EUR 3,079.00 USD 3,430.00 Until 13 Oct* |
Enrol now
to attend Face to face |
GBP 1,799.00 EUR 2,599.00 USD 2,950.00 Until 13 Oct* |
Enrol now
to attend Live webinar |
| 22-25 Jun 2021, Venue not yet confirmed | |||||
| 22-25 Jun 2021 | Venue not yet confirmed |
GBP 2,199.00 EUR 3,079.00 USD 3,430.00 Until 11 May 21* |
Enrol now
to attend Face to face |
GBP 1,799.00 EUR 2,599.00 USD 2,950.00 Until 11 May 21* |
Enrol now
to attend Live webinar |
| 23-26 Nov 2021, Venue not yet confirmed | |||||
| 23-26 Nov 2021 | Venue not yet confirmed |
GBP 2,199.00 EUR 3,079.00 USD 3,430.00 Until 12 Oct 21* |
Enrol now
to attend Face to face |
GBP 1,799.00 EUR 2,599.00 USD 2,950.00 Until 12 Oct 21* |
Enrol now
to attend Live webinar |
Learn more about our different training formats.
* Note the early booking discount cannot be combined with any other offers or promotional code