Trainees lawyers should serve some time in IT, too

I was amused by one of the reader comments on my last blog – that there is nothing wrong with carrying a second phone, as a ‘belt and braces’ approach to IT is a good thing. I have since been busy adding a second PC to each of my users desks just in case.

Not really – I agree with belt and braces, but don’t agree it means two of everything.

Anyway, enough of that. I read with interest that Asda, the supermarket giant, has reduced its legal panel from 16 firms down to three. The three remaining firms have all signed up to a partnership charter which stipulates that lawyers working on the account will only be able to do so after a mandatory secondment to Asda. Another stipulation is that lawyers working on the account will also have to work in an Asda store over the Christmas period for no pay.

I could speculate as to why Asda wants to do this to their law panel members. Probably they want the lawyers involved in any of their business activities to have a ground-level appreciation of how Asda works. This may be especially true as lawyers possibly favour Waitrose over Asda in the world of grocery purchases.

It is refreshing that Asda has taken this stance in forcing lawyers to comply. What I wonder is how many of the lawyers in question will force their poor unsuspecting juniors into doing the secondment. Easy to do by adding a unit or two of a junior’s time, thus making them part of the deal. Shame if people miss the opportunity though. It certainly doesn’t hamper Terry Leahy, the Tesco boss, who does the same.

So what does this have to do with IT?
Well, I have long been an advocate of trainee lawyers in any law firm spending a week in each of the support departments prior to qualification. To my mind, this would help them gain an understanding of how those aspects of the firm work. Lawyers generally do not obtain education in anything other than the law, so the management of any part or function of the firm is not something that they ever get exposed to until they are in a very senior position. You can probably guess that this does not always work as well as it should.

Using my new powers as Gazette IT Blogger, I am going to ask The Law Society to change things. Meanwhile I’m off to Asda to look for trainee lawyer lookalikes.