Caroline Newman

I provide training, coaching and consultancy services to lawyers who want to improve their performance and their services to their clients. I am a solicitor and have been in the legal profession for over 20 years. I was an elected member of the Council of the Law Society for 7 years. I therefore have a great deal of knowledge about the problems facing the legal profession. I was a solicitor in a top City firm and I also owned my own law practice. I have been providing coaching, consulting and training services to law firms, solicitors, barristers and judges for 5 years, helping them to identify the source of their business and life problems and supporting them in finding solutions for those problems through listening, personal, executive and business coaching, consulting and group training. When I was a solicitor in private practice and also when I was setting up my own law practice I found that there was no support available. I also observed my colleagues who desperately needed help and confidential assistance and there was none available. The legal profession is going through rapid and constant change. Whilst lawyers are technically skilled they do not have the other types of skills that are now required for the next phase of their development and that of their firm or chambers. They are not trained in people skills, problem solving, or accessing creativity. They are increasingly under threat from competition from large companies and banks that are now able to enter the legal services market. Research conducted by the law society demonstrated that the main problem facing associates is that managers do not know how to manage, develop or supervise their employees. It costs £200,000 to train a solicitor only for them to leave the firm or the profession. Lawyers work very long hours and have a great amount of stress. Lawyers who want to set up their own firms have little or no business skills and make elementary mistakes. Partners in law firms and senior barristers used to be able to provide and mentoring to those who they believed had potential. These days they are no longer able to do that. Changes in equality laws mean that these services are to be available to all. Further with the increasing demands on their time they are not able to provide this input into the development of the careers of new lawyers. There is no single place where lawyers and HR professionals in law can find out about coaching services etc and access the services prov