11 April 2024

Are you still learning? This legal beagle thinks you should be.

We recently caught up with Kate Sherburn, Legal Beagle at Who Gives a Crap. Kate leads a small team at this well-known business that donates 50% of its profits to the developing world. During our conversation, we covered the importance of learning. And how acquiring new skills is essential for professional success.

At Front Foot, we believe that learning is one of the best investments in your time, and that knowledge is becoming its own form of currency. Kate explains how she used the knowledge and templates from Front Foot Academy module — Legal Strategic Planning to create a practical and effective legal strategy to help her team.

FF: How important is ongoing learning to you?

KS: I’m always learning. I feel like I learn something from every single conversation I have. I like the idea that we can do things better. What we know at the moment is the best we can do with the knowledge we have, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best we can do.

FF: Why did you decide it was time to learn more about strategy?

KS: As we built our team, I realised, “Well, it can’t all stay in my head anymore.” We were growing as a business, and we’d implemented new formal processes. I had business templates, but I needed something with a legal focus.

I chose to do the strategy unit because I needed to build a legal strategy. You can talk to someone about building out a legal strategy, but they won’t sit you through the exact steps they took — they can’t give you examples.

I had a high-level idea of what I needed to do, but I felt that I could be doing a much better job. And then, when I saw that particular module, I thought, “That’s how I can learn what to do.”

FF: What did you enjoy, and what value did you get from the strategy course?

KS: I simply followed the module’s steps as I was doing my own legal strategy. And I found that really, really useful because it gave me a framework. All the ideas were floating around in my head, but I struggled to organise them into something practicable.

FF: What did you find particularly useful?

KS: The templates were helpful because I just followed the steps. They show you how to set it all out.

FF: And did it work for your team?

KS: Well, we’re still using the strategy. So, yep, it really did!

Our Legal Strategic Planning module teaches you how to use strategic planning to achieve goals and improve alignment with clients and your team.

Browse our Academy modules and learn how to work smarter.