FINAL ASSIGNMENT

Lisa Santiago

Challenge

When I was working as the Banking Legal Manager of an Investment Bank one of  my responsibilities was to hire my staff with the support of HR Department.

And something I realized during the interviewing process of junior lawyers, was the  lack of preparation they had regarding banking and corporate law. It seemed that  the Universities only gave them an introduction and a few guidelines.  Also, I  noticed the lack of practical knowledge, analysis and drafting skills they had.  So,  after several interviews with no luck, I ended hiring the junior lawyers who  demonstrated a positive attitude, proactivity, great communication skills, resilient,  willingness to support the legal department, and most important: the one who was  eager to learn.

But the big problem, was that I had to spend a lot of time, training them, and as the  legal manager, with deadlines, working meetings in house and outside the office, I  had a very limited time to do so. But I remembered when I was beginning my  career, that I had to learn by practicing.

So, I decided to create a legal training program focused 100% in practice, to help  junior lawyers improve their day to day skills in banking law, so they could achieve  more job opportunities, and to support legal managers who wanted to train their  in-house junior lawyers.

Selection

I was convinced, that people learn more when they do things. Actually, there is a  pyramid of knowledge created by Cody Blair that says: 75% of knowledge after 24  hours comes from what we practiced.  So, It was time for a LEARNING LANCH. I  wanted to test my hypothesis, and I created a prototype course. The course will  contain 21 hours of 100% practical legal training, focused on corporate and banking

law, to give them a true idea of what meant to be a banking and corporate lawyer,  day by day.

Aplication

I reached 8 junior lawyers, who were passionate about banking law, and I offered  them the course for free. I rented a very nice conference room instead of a  traditional classroom, to make them feel like they were in an office working.

The first 2 sessions, where focused on the most simple topics, like creation of  corporations, and we had workshops where they learned how to draft and create  a corporation from scratch.

They had the opportunity of learn about banking products, and to draft credit  contracts. My method was based on “learning by doing”.

Insight

The group was composed by a 2nd year law school student, 2 junior lawyers working  on banks, 1 senior lawyer who never practiced banking law, and senior year law  school students, who wanted to become banking lawyers when they graduated.

The first day, some of them did not have an idea of what an interest rate was. And  with the days passing by I saw how they started to speak with banking terms, and  they were drafting contracts guided by me, but totally understood the subject. It  was amazing to see them how they evolved in every class! I proved that practice in  legal industry is key.

Approach:

After we finished the course, I made some adjustments on the syllabus, and  included the use of TCs, to make classes more interactive.

After that learning launch, Beyond Law School was formally founded.

