Recorded Webinar: 3 CPD Compulsory Topics for Lawyers – a national webinar for lawyers

This webinar comprises 3 one-hour sessions covering each of the compulsory CPD subjects for lawyers for the CPD year ending 31 March 2019.

Session 1: Legal Ethics: Acting Beyond Your Expertise – Caution, ‘Wrong Way’, Turn Back Now

Doing legal work outside your area of practice does not relieve you of duty to act with reasonable care. This session examines ethical duty when presented with matters that are beyond your skill base, including:

• Lack of basic knowledge – duty of care and ethical obligations when knowing too little

• Awareness of knowing when you are not competent to act

• When to admit you don’t know – the ethics of disclosure

• Communicating to client your level of professional competence

• Educating the client – expressing opinion outside your area of expertise

• Working with competent counsel – is this is the answer?

• The ethics of deciding to expand into a ‘new area’

• Case study – dealing with the friend who wants to ‘run this by you’

Session 2: Professional Skills: Legal Research in the Modern World

Legal research is an area in which few lawyers keep updating their skills but without a refresher, you could find yourself in all types of trouble. Will you know where to find the latest case, article or legislative change? This session looks at the ways in which legal research has changed and will give you some tips to ensure your research is effective. It covers:

• Subscription services – are they worth it? What are the alternatives?

• Freely available resources – sorting the wheat from the chaff

• Law Society resources

• What sites can you utilize to keep up to date?

• Finding cases by citation, party names or topic

• Finding judicial consideration of a case

• International jurisdictions:

  • when are they helpful?

  • finding foreign cases

• Case study – finding legislation and articles on an obscure topic

Session 3: Practice Management Business Skills: IT Security for Lawyers – Protecting Client Information and Guarding Confidential Data

IT security is front of mind for law firms right now, particularly in light of recent cyber security breaches involving practitioners. It’s vital that practitioners are across how to best manage the risks - a cyber breach will impact not only your legal obligations, but also damage your brand and disrupt your practice. This session examines how to best protect against cyber security breaches, including:

• Identifying where your vulnerabilities lie in your practice:

  • sensitive client information

  • bank account details

  • transfer of funds

• Impacts of cyber breaches - an overview

• Implementing an appropriate cyber security plan and conducting an IT health check:

  • firewalls and anti-virus protection - criteria for assessment

  • encryption in law firm data security

  • computer lockdowns in the law firm

  • keeping up with upgrades

• Limiting employee (and former employee) access to data

• Managing remote work IT and data security

• What should be in your policies?

• Use of external consultants for IT security issues: who, what and where

• Case study - Recent cyber security breaches affecting the legal sector