2010

In today’s high-tech work environment you may find yourself pushed to learn how to use new software in order to take on a new role or responsibility. Sometimes you may find yourself forced into using software that you have never heard of, let alone used. Maybe it’s not even the case that it’s new software; rather, you get forced into using the same old application in a way that surpasses your technical capabilities. If you are like me, you may just want to master a new application for fun as well as for the potential work benefits.

At the Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs, we have used our journal to report back on the effects of employment law on economic recovery in the past. We discussed the possibility that some businesses were struggling to cope with the financial burden that such legal regulations impose upon them, and how this may have led to a sharp increase in the number of employment tribunals that were being pursued.

Since I obtained my Associate Membership of this Institute, I have been working in litigation.  It has equipped me with necessary skills pertaining to the court litigation process after the Philippine Supreme Court’s Approval on the Small Claims Court and the amendments of Civil Procedure in Philippine Courts, as promulgated by Philippine Supreme Court.

The amendments of the 1997 Philippine Civil Procedure gave the chance for the Small Claims Court to be created in 2008.  Now it has been implemented across the lower courts in my country.  It gives a “taste of swift justice” to the underprivileged citizens of our country for them to obtain justice, or if they are the defendants of a particular case, swift vindication can be obtained.

Requests for Further Information

This is the seventh article in a series focusing on specialist skills and knowledge in Civil Litigation. Litigation can be a time-consuming and expensive process, but what happens when one side is not pulling their weight? What I mean by this is how does a party that has set out their statement of case clearly and provided full disclosure deal with an opponent that is giving “the silent treatment”? It may be that a “silent” party does not realise that their statement of case raises more questions than it answers. More likely they know exactly what they are doing and want to say as little as possible. At any point a party may “clam up”, leaving the other side struggling to get a clear idea of the case they are up against.

Ever since legal aid was first introduced in England and Wales back in 1949, many people believe that this fund, which is paid for by the tax-payer, has increasingly continued to move away from the fundamental principles by which it was first established to serve. Indeed, the Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has established a consultation period for extensive changes to the legal aid system and has stated that one of the most worrying reasons for this is down to the fact that legal aid is accessible in cases where court intervention may not have been the best way forward. It has been recognised that other dispute resolution services may have produced far better results and at a fraction of the cost to the legal aid fund.

As a Secretary with the European Institutions you can pursue a fascinating future and help them make a difference for 500 million European citizens. Working alongside colleagues of every nationality in the heart of Europe, you will be vital to everything they do and you can expect a challenging international work environment and a career full of opportunities.

To join EU Institutions, you’ll need to be a qualified or experienced secretary with English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Maltese, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish as your main language. You’ll also need a good command of a second language (English, French or German), great problem-solving skills and the initiative to make things happen.

Life as a Secretary With the European Institutions

A review of the rules on appointing expert witnesses and an outline of best practices when instructing an expert

This is the sixth article in a series focusing on specialist skills and knowledge in Civil Litigation. Expert witness evidence can be crucial to winning a case, so choosing the right expert and instructing him or her properly is an important task. As a legal secretary, you would not normally be expected to choose the actual expert in a case, but that does not mean you do not have a role in the process.

Like nearly everything else nowadays, there are sometimes too many choices, so being in a position to narrow down the options is valuable to a fee earner as it will save him or her time. If you are asked to compile contact details for appropriate experts, there are a number of places you can look.

I started working as an office junior in November 1999, aged 17 years.  I had actually wanted to be a Travel Agent, but upon gaining one day’s work experience with a local firm I decided this career was not for me, mainly because they put me in a back office to file invoices all day.  I really believe that if you are trying to sell a position to someone, they need to experience it properly in order to make an informed decision.

Three weeks later I found myself still unemployed and getting desperate to stand on my own two feet, which is when I came across an advertisement in the jobs section of the local newspaper for an Office Junior in a City Centre Solicitors firm.  At this point I didn’t have any office experience, but as they were advertising for a junior I thought, “How much experience could they want from me?”

It is often said that we ought not to worry. In fact, this is far from the case, provided we ‘worry well’. Our brains thrive on being stretched and on finding solutions to difficulties. When we worry well, we engage both our higher intelligence and our innate creativity, which not only reduces stress but also gives us a sense of competence and achievement. So worrying well is good for you and is a skill we can all usefully cultivate.

Worrying well involves engaging, perhaps with a sense of curiosity, with a problem to see if we can do anything about it (and then taking action) or, if we can’t do anything about it, figuring out whether we need to change our reaction to it and then working on changing that reaction. Some people find it useful to use what is called a worry decision tree. Here it is:

If you have never studied criminal law, you may well be under the impression that provocation could be used as a defence to mitigate a number of different charges. For example, if someone is charged with an assault, surely they may have been provoked into committing that offence? However, with the defence of provocation, this could not be further from the truth. This is because this specific defence is only available for a person who has been charged with murder; it is not possible to rely on this defence in the case of manslaughter.

We recognise these calls pretty quickly, don't we?  The callers with high-pitched speech, sighs, long pauses, terse answers and increasing volume.  Telling them to "take it easy" or "stay calm" will probably make it worse.  So before your call turns abusive, here are top ten tips to help you handle a difficult caller:

Is that a groan familiar from your school days?  If only you had listened, you’d know all about nouns, verbs, sentences and so on.  Or perhaps you were part of the ‘lost generation’ at school between the late 1960s and 1990s, and so you didn’t have a formal education in grammar and punctuation.  Do not fear: here are our top ten tips on grammar:

The good Legal Secretary is well liked. Visitors to the office recall your courteous, cheerful manner, your intelligent considerateness and your smile. Fellow employees value your helpful cooperation and the little favours you are able to grant them. As for your employer, he depends on you in a hundred different ways, not only in business dealings but sometimes in social matters as well. It is part of your job to create a good impression and to establish and maintain friendly relations. Your corner of the office shows a touch of colour, literally as well as figuratively.

Why do we need a memory? At its most basic level, our memory is there so that we do not need to relearn things; to take examples from early life, things such as learning how to walk, talk, read, write, ride a bicycle, etc. At a broader level, the memory’s function is to allow us to access relevant and accurate information at the right time. To access relevant information, research has shown that we are more likely to remember important things by writing them down and leaving our memory the job of knowing where the information is written down rather than burdening it with holding all the details in the immediate recall section of the memory stores. In other words, using tools both to jog our memory and to provide the full detail needed.

We live in an era when freedom of information is being vigorously pursued by all and sundry. Though we might have constitutional rights to demand certain information, sometimes we won’t so easily have access to this information. Just as we need access to certain information, people also have their reasons for needing confidentiality and their rights to such cannot be violated. According to the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO), confidentiality is simply “ensuring that information is accessible only to those authorised to have access.” Conversely, information lacks confidentiality to the extent that it is available or when it is disclosed to unauthorized persons or processes.

A summary of the rules of disclosure and an update on the expanding use of electronic disclosure

This is the fifth article in a series focusing on specialist skills and knowledge in civil litigation. We have previously considered the skills needed to prepare court bundles (February 2009); without prejudice correspondence (March 2010); pre-action protocols (June 2010); and legal costs in litigation (August 2010).

When we considered pre-action protocols it was noted that any case rests on the evidence. In particular, the importance of exchanging evidence early was highlighted. What was not considered was exactly how parties disclose evidence.

Parties usually have to disclose information in the following circumstances:

We spend a large proportion of our weekday lives working, but how much time do we spend on checking that our job and office environment is working for us? Here are some of the basics. You might find it useful to run an audit to check whether you can make or influence any improvements.

You have days when there just seems no point to what you’re doing – where it all feels futile or meaningless. Your motivation is low, yet the work still needs to be done.

Whatever your situation, here’s how to find meaning in your work, and to get your motivation back.

Think about your values

What’s truly important to you? Maybe it’s your family, your health, or your career. Maybe it’s simply having the time to enjoy yourself and do things that you love.

How many times have you had to reread the last page or so to catch what you didn’t take in? The best way to learn the skills and to practise them in timed sessions is on our very successful half-day course. You will see amazing results!

In the meantime, and so you don’t just go through the motions", here are ten tips to help you read more quickly and effectively.

We last considered the subject of costs in an article published in November 2007. At that time, we considered what requirements had to be followed by a firm to ensure that they were complying with the (then new) Solicitors’ Code of Conduct 2007. The most important part of the Code for costs is the rules that require clients to be given clear and accurate cost quotes and estimates. Most law-firm staff will have come to grips with the Code long ago, but new changes are pending that will further regulate this area of legal costs.   These changes are based on the recommendations of Lord Justice Jackson, who has spent more than a year creating a weighty, 663 page report

Good organisation is all about planning ahead and preparing effectively. When we organise things well, we make the best and most economic use of our time and skills and we also have the satisfaction of having dealt with things with clarity of thought and purpose.

The Space Race

Have you ever been told you can be ‘read like a book’? Are you aware when your body language is ‘leaking’, or giving you away? Words are only a very small part of communication: while you are saying the words, your body is speaking volumes! Sometimes, you don’t even have to say anything: your face or body language will have said it for you! So, if you want to make sure you send all your messages in the way you intend them, here are the top ten tips to help you:

To-do lists are a great way of increasing productivity. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the tasks we have to do during the course of a week, but we can eliminate stress by creating achievable goals. If you take the time to write down the tasks you need to complete, you will find that the list will help you to put your workload in perspective and keep the end in sight.

Here are some tips on creating to-do lists to make your workload more manageable:

1. Be realistic. Set achievable outcomes for each day and don’t put too much on your list.

The scrapping of training grants for legal aid lawyers has come like a bolt out of the blue for many in the legal profession, especially those who have grown used to the largesse of the Legal Services Commission.

The scheme, which was launched in 2002, provided awards to a maximum of £20,000 to legal aid firms. The funds could be used to pay the whole of the tuition fees of the Professional Skills Course, as well as a significant contribution to Legal Practice Course fees. Additionally, the salaries of trainee Solicitors were paid for the two years of their training contracts.

Dropbox

Dropbox is the best way to back up your files and keep your files synced between multiple computers. Once installed, Dropbox creates a folder in your Documents or Home folder. Anything saved to this folder will be backed up online and can be synced to any other computers that have Dropbox installed on the same account. You can also share folders with your friends who use Dropbox. The basic account is absolutely free and gives you 2 gigabytes of storage space. It is cross platform and runs on Windows, OSX and Linux.

Avast Antivirus

Negotiating skills come into play whenever we are contact with others, whether professionally, personally or socially. Improving these skills allows us to be at our best in order to achieve successful mutual outcomes.

The three main keys to success are effective handling of ourselves, handling of others and dealing with the problem.

Let's look at each of these in turn:

1. Effective handling of ourselves

If you are working as a Legal PA and would like access to another good resource to help you in your career, look no further than http://www.personal-assistant-tips.com. This informative website includes tips and advice for junior and senior PAs alike. There are many beneficial articles on checklists for meetings, managing your boss, event planning, minute taking, business writing and more.

You will find a comprehensive set of PA tools and links for organising and planning corporate travel on the site. They include embassy information, inoculation requirements, visa requirements, airline and airport codes, world holidays, international driving licence requirements and a worldwide Wi-Fi locator.

The ILSPA Legal Secretary Jobs Board is the UK’s largest niche recruitment site for Legal Secretaries and PAs. It was specifically designed to help our Members and Students secure employment by aggregating Legal Secretary jobs from across the web as well as enabling law firms and recruitment agencies to post jobs directly. If you are presently looking for a Legal Secretary job, register on our jobs board to gain access to around 2,000 vacancies across the UK. 

Registering on the jobs board will allow you to:

There are times when it can be hard to focus on your studies. Sometimes the subject material might be particularly challenging, or sometimes there are unwelcome distractions or activities which appear to be more appealing than studying. It could be that it is simply not easy to concentrate at times. But you want to complete the course and do well, and you want to be able to look back after completing the course and know with a sense of satisfaction that you have achieved your best. So how can you best build and maintain that focus?

Have a really clear goal and remind yourself of it

We’re all guilty of either saying or thinking this once or twice in our careers (present company included). The boss asks us to perform a task that we feel is a bit ‘beneath’ us and the phrase magically pops into our brain. However, what happens when the thought becomes an attitude, and how much truth is there in the comment in the first place?

Most people do not read minutes particularly carefully. They were either at the meeting and so only need a quick reminder of the discussions and action points or they were not there and therefore just need an overview and, once again, action points. So it is essential that the minutes can be skim-read and understood at first reading. Here are the top 10 tips to make your minutes understandable:

Sometimes our self-esteem can take a bit of a dive. It is natural for it to fluctuate, but we all need a base level to get the most out of work and life generally. So, what is self-esteem and how can we boost it when we need to?

A review of the growing importance of pre-issue steps in litigation and how the trained Legal Secretary can assist.

The famous line ‘No man is an island’ by the English poet John Donne is never more true than when working in a busy Solicitor’s office. Even the most skillful of Solicitors will rely on their support staff to ensure that they are working at the top of their game. As a trained Legal Secretary you will be in a position to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the fee earners you work for. This article is one in a series focusing on key areas of practice and the specialist skills and knowledge that will help make you indispensible.

Following a disastrous explosion on an oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico on the 20 April 2010, 11 workers tragically lost their lives and a further 17 people were injured. Before we even begin to analyse the legal implications of this disaster, it is important that we spare our thoughts for the friends and families of these unfortunate employees.

There is absolutely no denying the fact that the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill represents one of the worst human-made natural disasters that this planet has ever seen. The United States have already stated that this oil spill is the worst in their own country’s history, and with the flow still not completely contained, it is difficult and altogether rather frightening to speculate on the eventual end that this catastrophe will reach.

We would like to provide you with some help and advice on how to secure employment as a Legal Secretary.  

Employers can be very selective in choosing the right person for the job and they are increasingly looking for those who have the right qualifications, skills or experience. Having studied the Legal Secretaries Diploma course or being an ILSPA Member gives you a great advantage, but there are many other factors which must be taken into account when looking for work.

Preparation

In various articles over the last few months, I have mentioned mental rehearsal. Here are some more details about this and how to practise it. As Gandhi once said: ‘In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.’

The principles involved are very straightforward:

The Con-Lib coalition have been exceptionally busy over the past month in creating new legislation and implementing policies that they have always held dear. Some of these legal changes have had profound impacts upon many people in our society; indeed, some others have managed to raise the hackles on all of our backs, as we struggle to comprehend from where we are going to be able to find even more money to bail our country out.

There are many people who believe that whichever party assumed the position of our newest government, they would have been forced to tighten the reins of this country’s economy in a way that was never going to prove to be popular.

Organise

Use folders or labels to organise and manage your email. If you have a good reference system set up, you won’t ever have troubles looking for mail. Paper documents are filed for ease of use, and email should be treated the same way.

Archive

Keep your correspondence; you never know when you will need it. Most modern email systems provide plenty of space, so it’s good to get into the practice of saving any mail that isn’t junk. That way you can’t be accused of not sending somebody something when you have actually sent it and vice versa. During my career I have referred back to old emails on many occasions and have resolved a few disputes by looking in my archived mail.

Create filters/rules

When we focus on the positive aspects of our life, we enhance our life experience and create beneficial opportunities for the future. American psychologist Martin Seligman, in his book Learned Optimism, identified certain thinking styles which influence how we feel about ourselves and the world around us.

Those who regard good things as insignificant, temporary and attributable to external factors tend to be those who regard bad things as permanent, affecting most if not all of their life. These negative attributional styles set a person up for increased anxiety and distress

Common Areas of Expensive Legal Dispute – Part Two

In our previous article on common areas of legal dispute, we considered the pitfalls of entering into boundary disputes. I suggested that on some occasions it is better to consider the biblical saying ‘Love thy neighbour’ rather than resort to expensive legal proceedings. In this article we are considering complaints of nuisance, intimidation and harassment. Surprisingly, the teachings of Jesus, provides us with a possible starting point to avoid these types of disputes, with his golden rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. It is not only Christianity that provides this simple ethical code; it appears in every other major religion. Unfortunately, despite its being a fairly simple ethical principle, it is very difficult to apply in practice.

All men are created equal but born unequal, hence the battle for supremacy. Wherever you have two or more people co-existing, politics thrives. Playing the game of office politics is inevitable and anyone who neglects office politics will be making incalculable mistakes. Office politics is simply the use of one’s assigned power in the workplace for the purpose of obtaining advantages beyond one’s legitimate authority, with a view to influencing the behaviour of others. It is all about manipulations which occur in any relationship where parties adopt indirect means to achieve their personal goals.

What is the balance between your work and other aspects of your life? Do you spend too much time working or thinking about work at the expense of other things? Do you have the skills and environment to make your working life satisfying? 

Having a balanced life involves welcoming a range of aspects into your life. In particular, we function well and have satisfying lives when our various emotional needs are broadly met in balance. The most fundamental human emotional needs are these:

This is a very awkward subject to handle at the best of times, one that will always conjure up mixed emotions from different sections of society, and there is not a person in this country that will not be able to offer a strong opinion on the debate that rages over specific childhood laws.

When we use the term ‘specific’ here, we really mean the fact that in law, it is acceptable to use ‘reasonable punishment’ on a child when it would be totally illegal to do so on an adult. Indeed, if a person used the same level of force on another adult, this would probably come under s. 47 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. 

Anybody that works in the world of employment law will be the first to appreciate just how fast-moving this area of the legal industry really can be. If a smaller company cannot afford the services of a trained human resources manager, it can be such a difficult job to stay abreast of all of the regulatory changes and obligations that it faces.

Equally, the average employee will be hard pressed to keep a mental note of every single amendment that may affect his or her working life. These are two good reasons why employment law practitioners are likely to be kept exceptionally busy for the foreseeable future. 

In this article, rather than tackling one specific issue that is due to come into effect in employment law, it seems more prudent to take on five of them. This way we can learn a little bit more through the same article. 

Do you feel you are a negotiator in your role at work? You may have answered ‘no’, however, I feel the answer is most definitely ‘YES’! Although we associate negotiating with salespeople, we are all salespeople at some time. We often have to negotiate deadlines that need changing, tasks that we can or can’t do, or responsibilities that others want us to take on. We are always negotiating. So here are the top 10 tips to help you reach ‘win-win’ situations.

Teams are generally made up of all sorts of different types of people with different strengths and weaknesses. When the team works in balance, each member of the team feels encouraged to contribute his or her own strengths and capabilities to the team to support it, and the individual needs of each person (as opposed to things he or she might just want!) are respected. 

Whilst all individuals have similar emotional needs, for some people some of these needs rank higher than for others in the workplace. For others, various needs are met wholly or partly outside the workplace and so they are not so reliant on work to meet that need. If the respective needs in the work environment are not recognised and respected, the team is likely to become unstable.

Two of the main needs in this context are:

If you are interested in advancing your career and becoming a Paralegal, watch the following film by the National Association of Licensed Paralegals.  It was shown at their awards ceremony in March and Cherie Booth QC speaks highly of their merits.

NALP offers accredited and recognised professional paralegal courses, and qualifications for a career in the field of law.  Their paralegal training courses are designed to match your level of experience and we recommend the Higher Certificate in Paralegal Studies if you would like to further your career.

Do you ever do a to-do list and not achieve what’s on it? Does your to-do list just get longer and longer? Do you spend hours working out a to-do list and then not have any time to do the tasks on it? Or perhaps you’ve given up on using one altogether! Before you can plan and organise your working day, it is necessary to think of what is to be done and set up some simple drills to help you do it more effectively. So here are the top 10 tips for planning your working day.

Attending training courses in the current climate may not seem a high priority, but the fact is, with an alarming number of positions being amalgamated due to redundancies, and job functions becoming more blurred by the increased pressure to absorb workload, the need for those able to progress quickly is critical, and thus the need for training is, perhaps, greater than ever. 

Focusing on your professional development will not only increase your skills and enhance your CV, it also demonstrates to management that you are ready, willing and able for career progression. 

We usually know deep down what we need and what infringes our needs even if we don’t recognise it on a conscious level. Being able to stand back, making this a conscious process and then cultivating the skill to communicate what we need to others is assertive communication. It is not to do with being forceful, selfish or insensitive – instead it is communication which is firm, balanced, clear, and more than anything else, it is congruent with our individual needs (and I emphasise needs as distinct from wants: we may want to win the lottery but our need is to have a sense of financial security and financial balance).

What is confidence? The word comes from the Latin for “with trust or faith” in a person or thing.

Myths

There are various myths about confidence. Here are a few of them:

“Either you have it or you don’t” – actually confidence is a set of skills which can be learned. Any difficulty is because you haven’t learned how to do it yet. As a human being, you are a learning organism which can co-ordinate movements, understand and communicate, read and write, and do a thousand other complex things.

“If your confidence has been shaken once, you can never get it back” – it may take a greater leap of faith to start building it back, but once there, you will be much stronger than before and less likely to have it shaken again.

Meetings often fail because participants haven’t prepared enough. Consequently, meetings drag on and decisions cannot be made. To make sure you are better prepared for your next meeting, and to present a more professional image to your colleagues, follow the checklist below.

1.    Be prepared. Preparation is vital. Spend time looking at the following: the agenda, attached papers and previous minutes. Think about what questions or comments you may be asked. Will there be any contentious issues?

2.    Consider who will be there. What sort of common ground will there be between you and the other participants?

Motivation is directed by positive emotion. Motivation propels us towards something rather than holding us back.

If there is a positive expectation for the outcome of what we are doing, then that expectation will motivate us towards it.

If we experience anxiety, anger or other negative expectations, then this will maintain and increase stress levels, which, if unchecked, will in turn interfere with the positive elements of the expectation, often by distorting or deleting those positive elements.

What is it we want to achieve? Is it motivation we lack when feeling lacklustre about a Monday morning or a particular task? Or is it something else? Are we tired? What is going on in the rest of our lives?

We are all used to a bit of banter in the office, but it becomes a completely different matter when banter turns into something as serious as bullying. Bullying and harassment in the workplace have always been issues that have been played down to a certain extent, but recent studies by work unions have indicated that instances have almost doubled over the past ten years.

Workloads in a legal office are demanding at all levels. How we manage these will influence how we perform as well as how we feel.

There is a well-established principle of dividing what is important from what is urgent and of spending as much time as possible on things which are important and spending no or minimal time on things which are not important (urgent or not).

When we’re a customer in a shop or a client of a company, we like help, respect, understanding, satisfaction, value for money, action, friendly service … need I go on? So whether you’re dealing with a colleague’s or a multimillion-pound client’s request, you will have to satisfy these four basic needs: the need to be understood, the need to feel welcome, the need to feel important and the need for a comfortable environment.

So here are the top ten tips to help you meet those needs and guarantee that your clients remain your clients:

We were recently excited to come across a “Secretary’s Guide and Office Worker’s Manual” which was published in 1944.  It is packed full of useful advice for secretaries and office workers of the time, with the slogan “Get Ahead; Improve Yourself; Earn More Money”.

What we found interesting was that the advice given in the manual regarding career advancement has not changed over the intervening 60 years.  The basic principles of being successful in your job still exist today.  So although technology may have radically changed the way we work, social attitudes have not.

Knowledge and skills development is vital to the health of organisations.  We live in an information age today, and organisations are routinely valued not just on their physical but on their intellectual capital.  Training is one of the chief methods of maintaining and improving intellectual capital, so the quality of an organisation’s training affects its value. Untrained or poorly trained employees cost significantly more to support than well-trained employees do.  Training affects employee retention and is a valuable commodity that, if viewed as an investment rather than as an expense, can produce high returns.

We are problem-solving animals. Our brains are designed to find solutions to enhance our life. This applies as much to practical problems of which we are very much consciously aware – such as how to deal with that difficult matter, colleague or client – as it does to problems that need addressing in one or more areas of our lives of which we are often only subconsciously aware – a nagging thought, perhaps, that something is not really quite right.

You may be surprised to learn that 60% of people rate fear of public presentations even above the fear of death. This comes from an ancient fear of ostracism from the tribe, abandonment and vulnerability, which remains part of our inheritance in the emotional brain. The emotional (subconscious) part of our brain evolved for life in the wild, whereas our intellectual (conscious) brain evolved much later. Fear produces stress and it triggers the fight or flight response; danger requires a physical response, not an intellectual one. That response is only turned off when we take physical action – fighting or fleeing – or if we become skilled at reducing stress by becoming calm. Excess stress inhibits access to our intellectual and rational brain.

A review of the success and failings of Lord Woolf’s reforms

This year we mark the tenth anniversary of the Civil Procedural Rules (CPR). Before the new rules were introduced, civil litigation was seen as too slow, expensive, uncertain and adversarial. The implementation of the CPR was the result of Woolf’s famous “Access to Justice” report, commissioned in 1994. The name of the report speaks volumes and supports the view that the old rules of civil litigation were not delivering justice. So ten years on, have things changed for the better?

The rise and rise of litigation?

Some lucky few seem to be born with loads of confidence. Most of us need to develop it through practice. Confidence is about gaining the inner strength to do something and then feeling comfortable about using that strength, without worrying disproportionately about what others will think of you. So pursuing a job promotion, a personal dream, or even just standing up to speak in a team meeting, all take confidence. It’s not uncommon to think that we don’t need to build up our confidence until we are in a situation where it’s needed. However, this often means we are unprepared. So here are the top ten tips to help you build your confidence so you are more prepared:

Without goals we are not stretched. Being stretched mentally or physically is one of our basic needs, alongside the sense of achievement and satisfaction that comes from achieving not only the goal itself, but also from achieving each step along the way.

So, what are goals and how do we best go about setting them? We can think of goal-setting as creating a positive set of expectations. Those expectations then give our mind something to work towards, mobilising our resources both consciously and sub-consciously.

One really effective method of setting goals is by using what is called the SMART approach. SMART stands for:

In the wake of the Parliamentary Expenses Scandal that has rocked Great Britain this year, many politicians that we gave our trust (and votes) to have been exposed as cheats. They used the existing parliamentary expenses system to claim for some ludicrous and outrageous items. No matter whether it was a 59p tin of dog food or £22,500 for dry rot repairs in a home that conveniently was changed to a second home days before the claim, the British public have taken a stand and shouted for reform; we will no longer stand for our politicians raiding the public purse for extravagances and items that are not relevant to their job.

Even some simple changes in our everyday life and routine can make a profound difference to our performance and allow us to get more out of work and life generally. Taking care to do more things that boost serotonin and endorphins (our natural feel-good chemicals) will promote a better and more stable mood and help us to cope better in difficult times. In contrast, doing things that produce stress hormones will undermine mood and prevent us from performing well and getting the best from what we do.

Here are the main recommendations:

Have you ever noticed how much more you can get done on the occasional day that you work away from the office? So where does the time go in the office? A “quick” question from a colleague, a phone call, a never-ending flow of incoming emails, a quick trip to the coffee machine: they all add up. So here are the top ten tips to help you minimise interruptions:

1. Are you the cause of your interruptions? Work out whether you are using interruptions as an excuse to avoid your work. If you procrastinate, butterfly from job to job, or are distracted by the world outside your window, do something about it!

If you say the words “capital punishment” to anyone you will get a varying degree of opinions on the subject. Capital punishment has always been (and will always likely be) a strong topic for debate. No matter whether you are for or against the death penalty in Great Britain, it has to be acknowledged that there have been several instances of miscarriage of justice throughout the years.

Happy New Year professional colleagues! Thank God for bringing us thus far, with the promising Year 2010 already here.  I am confident that we can all succeed provided we acknowledge that success is not an accident. It begins with a well conceived plan. Therefore, to succeed in any of our endeavours, we need to plan consciously. By not consciously planning to succeed, we are unconsciously planning to fail.

Our relationships with colleagues in the workplace are important, and can to a large extent determine the level of our success. Good workplace relationships will not only help you do your job better, but also make your daily work more enjoyable. In turn, bad relationships with colleagues can be very distracting and can cause a great deal of anxiety.

I would like to share my recent experience of working with children in India with our Members. For many years, it has been one of my goals to dedicate some of my time to underprivileged children in a poor country and at last I have had the opportunity to fulfil it. Fortunately the wonders of the Internet enabled me to continue my work for the Institute at the same time.

We celebrate our twentieth anniversary with pride, as we have become recognised as the leading organisation in our field. ILSPA not only offers accredited and recognised qualifications but also provides professional recognition for our Members and their ongoing development, together with support, advice and career guidance for trainee and experienced Legal Secretaries throughout the UK and overseas.

The Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs was formed in 1990 by a group of like-minded legal professionals to promote the excellence and professional recognition of Legal Secretaries and PAs. We initially existed to assist legal practices with their main support staff functions by helping maintain and improve services to their clients through the expertise and diligence of a well-informed and commercially aware secretariat.

We are pleased to announce the introduction of a new level of Membership – Affiliate. This is open to those who have qualified with the Legal Secretaries Diploma from the Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs or have an equivalent Legal Secretary qualification.

Law graduates are also eligible to apply for this level of Membership, especially if they are interested in studying the Legal Secretaries Diploma course so that they can gain the practical skills required to work in a law firm.

On 11 March 2010, the National Association of Licensed Paralegals held a special event at the House of Commons to mark their 23rd anniversary and to present awards to their highest achieving Students of the year. Since 1987, the National Association of Licensed Paralegals has dedicated itself to the promoting the status of Paralegals and paralegal training in the United Kingdom and abroad. NALP is recognised as an awarding organisation by Ofqual, the regulator of qualifications in England, and has accredited our courses.

We are delighted to have received a record number of enrolments for our Legal Secretaries Diploma course this September. The good reputation of the Institute is growing year by year and many of our enrolments are from word of mouth. The course is of great worth and the proof is in the pudding as Students have gained a variety of excellent positions on the strength of the qualification.

This time last year I did some voluntary work for El Shaddai children’s charity in India and I would like to give you an update to how my fundraising has progressed over the past year.  El Shaddai provide orphans, street, slum, abused and sick children with the basic necessities of life.  The care the children receive develops their personalities and helps them to have a brighter future.  El Shaddai’s slogan is ‘Let there be no child on the streets without a proper childhood and they need help to fulfill their dream.'