Government Legal Support Staff
Support staff play a vital role in the effective operation of public sector legal practice. Invest in your assistant spending a half a day to learn essential information specifically tailored for all levels of Government. They’ll learn from senior government managers how to meet managerial expectations, delve into their record keeping responsibilities and the importance of confidentiality and privacy, & gain new practices to manage work related stress whilst developing personal resilience. WEB216N07
Description
Attend and earn 4 CPD units including:
1 CPD unit in Substantive Law
2 CPD units in Practice Management & Business Skills
1 CPD unit in Professional Skills
This program is applicable to practitioners from all States & Territories
Chair: Keith Whitehouse, General Manager, State Solicitor Office (WA)
Substantive Law
9.00am to10.00am Refresher on the Legal System: Structure and Terminology
- What is law?
- Different areas of the law: Federal, State and Local Government
- How the legal profession operates
- Key legal documents and forms assistants should know about
- Trial/ hearing preparation
- Legal ethics
Presented by Andrew Field, Managing Principal Solicitor, Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office
Practice Management & Business Skills
10.00am to 11.00am Managing the Expectation of your Managers and What’s Expected of a Legal Assistant
- Managing up
- How to manage your solicitors to ensure tasks are completed in the required timeframe
- Manage estimates and tracking the spend on matters
- Keeping track of what matters your teams are working on?
- Managing multiple tasks, deadlines and competing priorities
- Keeping the team informed about project timeframes
- Developing open and honest communication
- Tips on easing the administrative workload of your solicitors
Presented by Margot Clarkson, Special Counsel | Native Title and Resources Native Title, Resources and Dispute Resolution, Crown Law
11.00am to 11.10am Break
Professional Skills
11.10am to 12.10pm Record Management and Confidentiality
- What employees need to do: their recordkeeping responsibilities
- Why they need to do it
- How they are going to do it: examples of records that employees need to keep and how they can capture, keep and lawfully destroy them
- Dealing with email
- Managing electronic files
- Maintaining confidentiality of information and documents
Presented by Elizabeth Forbes, Senior Associate, Clayton Utz
Practice Management & Business Skills
12.10pm to 1.10pm Ensuring Your Wellbeing and Mental Health in Challenging Times
- Managing optimum mental health when working flexibly
- Emotional regulation: managing your stress levels while mediating the stress levels of your managers and their clients
- Burnout: early warning signs and impact on productivity
- Exposure to distressing content: risks and protective factors
- Developing personal resiliency
Presented by Emma Howard, Psychologist and National Mental Health Manager, Clayton Utz
1.10pm to 1.15pm Closing Comments and Questions
Presenters
Margot Clarkson
Margot specialises in advice and litigation relating to resources law and native title. Before joining government, Margot worked for several years as a solicitor in private practice, focusing on commercial and regulatory litigation. In 2011 she joined the Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel before moving to the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy’s In-house Legal Unit where she provided legal advice to several departments under a shared services arrangement. In her role at In-house Legal, Margot advised on the interpretation and application of a wide variety of statutes and worked closely with Crown Law’s Administrative Law Team in defending numerous judicial review applications.