Workshop 3: The role of the profession in providing legal education

Jim Moser (Dundas & Wilson LLP, Edinburgh) and Collette Paterson (The Law Society of Scotland)

This workshop was part of the 2010 conference Moving forward: Legal education in Scotland

abstract | biographies | notes

Jim Moser and Collette Paterson led this interactive workshop, which allowed participants, working in groups, to consider and feedback on two key questions directly linked to the immediately preceding plenary session.

Abstract

1. TCPD has a dual function in that it supports a trainee’s achievement of the PEAT 2 outcomes, and also introduces the concept of life-long learning at the earliest possible stage. In addition TCPD can be shaped to support a training organisation’s own approach to training. How can training organisations get the most out of the new, flexible, TCPD framework?”
2. PEAT 2 – incorporating TCPD – and the CPD reforms give us the need and the opportunity to change our existing education approaches. What, if anything, will stop us doing this, and what solutions are there to overcome any such barriers?

Biographies

Jim Moser is Director of Learning and Professional Development at Dundas & Wilson LLP. As such he is a full-time, legal training professional, responsible for the development through learning of approximately six hundred people, many of them lawyers. This ranges from the strategic development of overall learning plans and development competencies; to the delivery of certain programmes in soft and business skills areas. Jim was commercial property lawyer for many years; and also has a background as: a teacher of English as a foreign language, working and teaching as a lawyer abroad; and working and teaching in private industry. This year Jim has been a visiting fellow at the University of Strathclyde, researching into the design of PEAT 1 electives. Jim has extensive training experience with all types of audiences within and out with the legal profession, ranging from senior partners to key clients, and from diploma students to non-English speakers. He has a goal to lift the standards of legal training through the use of innovative and accelerated learning techniques, which he considers core to good learning. He has an excellent and strong reputation as an innovator of development and training programmes and as a trainer.

Collette Patterson graduated with a degree in law and Spanish language from the University of Glasgow. She trained and worked with Dundas & Wilson LLP, before joining The Law Society of Scotland in the post of New Lawyers’ Coordinator in summer 2006.

She assumed the post of Deputy Director (Education and Training) at the start of 2009, and has since developed and implemented policy for various education and training projects, as well as acting as project manager. These include the development of new accreditation guidelines for the post-graduate stage of legal training, work on learning outcomes to link PEAT 1, PEAT 2, Registered Paralegals and Solicitors’ Standards, and the introduction of The Law Society of Scotland Registered Paralegal Scheme in summer 2010. She also provides input to the Society’s ‘supporting new lawyers’ strategy, and accreditation work, led by the Society’s Development Officer and Accreditation Officer respectively.

Since January 2008 Collette has written a monthly column in the legal pages of the Scotsman newspaper, in which she discusses education and training issues amongst other things. She qualified as a PRINCE 2® Registered Practitioner in April 2010.

Last Modified: 10 March 2011