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After my previous post (What advice would I give my younger self?), I was interested to read some of the comments on LinkedIn and also an article about James Robart, the federal judge in the high-profile immigration ban case in the U.S.

Judge Robart apparently saw the Law “as a way to help people who feel they’ve been wronged, or that the odds are unfairly stacked against them”, according to a USA Today article.

It must take a lot of courage to be doing his job at the moment.

I really enjoyed this thoughtful article by Jeremy Holt. www.lawgazette.co.uk/

I have sometimes joked that I wouldn’t want my children to go into a career in Law, but this article helps remind me of some of the many positives to being a solicitor.

There are lots of rewards in a challenging job and in actually being able to help people, even if those rewards are not always financial!

I think I would tell my younger self to ignore other people’s views on what you should and shouldn’t do (“You are too young to set up your own firm” and “wanting to help people isn’t what Law’s about”) and follow your instincts.  Thankfully there have been lots of solicitors, barristers, staff in Law firms and clients who have been a constant source of support and encouragement along the way.

What would you say to your younger self?!

There needs to be a careful balance between protecting clients and tying everything up in so much red tape that it stifles innovation. The SRA is keen to promote the ability for firms to adapt and thrive and wants your input on how they can do that.

You can respond to their new consultation paper, which closes on 8th March 2017 and can be found at http://www.sra.org.uk/sra/consultations/enabling-innovation.page

For continuity planning, having a registered LPA for solicitors managing a firm (especially for sole practitioners) is very important. How would your firm operate if a key person lost mental capacity?

Preparing LPAs for ourselves or for our clients can be a tricky business.

Lawyer Monthly have an interesting article about creating Powers of Attorney online.

Read the Lawyer Monthly article here.

Doing enough CPD hours is no longer sufficient for establishing that a solicitor is competent. The SRA introduced some new requirements. These can be dealt with fairly simply – there are various schemes on offer to help and the SRA has a toolkit, to help you consider what training would be of benefit and evaluate if it addressed your needs.

http://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/cpd/tool-kit/continuing-competence-toolkit.page

There’s some discussion of this on my LinkedIn forum and information about courses available – Running a Law Firm on LinkedIn