Recorded Webinar: 3 CPD Compulsory Topics for Lawyers – a national webinar for lawyers

This webinar comprises 3 one-hour sessions covering each of the compulsory CPD subjects for lawyers for the CPD year ending 31 March 2022.

Session 1: Legal Ethics

Mind your Language: Ethical Boundaries in Professional Correspondence

Advocacy appears to have given way to more aggression, with increasing complaints about the behaviour and language used by lawyers in dealing with clients, opponents and other practitioners. This session will provide guidance on how practitioners can restore civility and collegiality into their professional interactions and correspondence, including:

• A reminder of the key conduct rules and standards
• What constitutes unprofessional conduct? An analysis through examples from cases brought before regulatory bodies
• The impact of unprofessional behaviour on the profession and the community
• What lawyers can do to improve interactions through:
  • Language
  • Emotion
  • Correspondence form and content
• Judicial intervention – how senior judges have entered the discussion

Session 2: Professional Skills

Dollars and Sense: Financial Literacy for Lawyers

Being financially literate is an important skill for lawyers. This session will explore why an understanding of financial and accounting basics is an integral part of a lawyer’s toolkit, and provide a guide to important financial concepts, including:

• How financial literacy contributes to your service provision
• Basic financial concepts and language and what every lawyer should know
• Understanding your client’s business and financial position through financial literacy
• Building credibility: communicating with your client on a financial level
• Drafting documents to present financial information
• Provision of financial details and conditions in contracts – understanding the big picture
• Identifying fraud and other anomalies
• Making informed practice decisions on the basis of financial information – budgets, billing and productivity
• Guides and resources for improving financial understanding.

Session 3: Practice Management Business Skills

A Roadmap for Managing Client Expectations

Developments in technology and consumer activism have led to a blurring of the lines between the professional and the personal, as well as to heightened expectations of interactions between service providers and their clients. This can leave practitioners feeling overwhelmed and under immense pressure. This session will provide advice on how to meet your obligations to your client while using effective techniques and strategies to maintain the required degree of professionalism, including:

• The fiduciary duty and the conduct rules – how these impact on your relationship and communication with your client
• Knowing your client – determining appropriate and clear communication and management methods
• Strategies for dealing with changes in the relationship, such as aging or distantly remote clients
• What to do when the family starts interfering
• Setting boundaries and keeping them
• Resources and tactics for dealing with clients behaving badly
• Is there a time to terminate the relationship?