Karen Battersby is Director of Knowledge Management at national law firm Freeths where she is responsible for the legal training and development of firm-wide personnel, a role that involves ensuring everyone has the knowledge and skills that they need to fulfil the requirements of their job. In previous roles, her remit includes implementing the changes in professional development regulations that replaced the previous continuing professional development regime with continuing competence. She previously taught the theory of reflective practice and reflective documentation using diaries with university assessment criteria on a Master's degree in Business Administration (MBA) in legal practice. Her teaching experience indicated that people need time to absorb, apply and think about the different ways that their reflections could be incorporated into their practice as a continuous process rather than a piecemeal response to the last transaction or case completed.
Karen's interview took place on the 29th November 2016 at Charles Russell Speechlys London where she was working at the time. The interview reveals her insights into the new SRA regime for professional appraisal through reflection on practice and gives an indication of the potential impacts on legal practitioners as well as the specific initiatives in place at her then place of work. It is important to be aware that the continuing competence regime was very new and little guidance was available for those implementing the unfamiliar regime. In the intervening three years since the initial innovation, much has been learnt through experience and a new set of standards for solicitors that changed the codes of conduct was launched on the 25th November 2019. The aim is to remove prescriptive rules "to reduce the burden on solicitors and law firms and allow solicitors greater freedom to use their professional judgement in considering how they meet the standards."
For details go to: https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/press/standards-regulations-start-date-2019
The interview (pdf file)
