A Programme such as this will provide confidence to clients to approach legal professionals for all their business needs. The Programme will enable practices to develop a crucial diversification. Further, the Programme will develop the skills and expertise required to manage the practice itself leading to improved efficiency and effectiveness. Legal professionals include those whose work incorporates a significant legal element.
Clients demand a far greater awareness of factors impacting on their affairs generally.
This approach is often referred to as 'helicopter vision' - the ability to look down on a business and set it holistically. Often, the post qualification years spent working with the detail of a specific area of law does not encourage or facilitate such 'helicopter vision'. We are all familiar with the difficulty in finding individuals capable of fulfilling the role of business leader in the modern competitive environment. Great strengths exist in specialist areas, but the ability to run a practice with commercial common sense, long term vision and through the application of appropriate management techniques is not always available or previously even perceived as a recognised need. Further, the significant changes introduced to the Civil System as a result of Lord Woolf's proposals effective from April 1999 demand, inter alia, a more business focused approach.