Hello everyone and welcome to the second blog in my IRG (Insurance & Reinsurance Group) seat. If you haven’t had a chance to read my first IRG blog, you can find it HERE.
This blog is going to be a little different in that I’m going to walk you through the various different types of internal and external conferences, internal training sessions and CMS events on offer to give you an idea of the types of things trainee solicitors can get involved in besides client work. It’s also the last blog in this series of 2022…how quickly the year has gone!
Internal training
As you may have picked up from my previous blogs generally, CMS offers a lot of training to its lawyers whether it is more generally on a sector-wide topic, a new piece of legislation coming in or offering skills training.
I was recently involved in a CMS Matrix (all contentious teams within CMS form the Matrix) training day focusing on persuasive writing and case analysis. It was a whole day workshop involving a case study, drafting letters to the other side’s solicitors and considering an application to the court for the substitution of an expert witness. We worked in teams and had the opportunity to discuss our approaches with other CMS teams. An incredibly busy but informative day to learn how to effectively de-construct a case, re-formulate it in a persuasive manner, deal with weaker points in our case and present the case in a coherent way.
On the insurance-specific side of things, I recently attended a training session on reserving. In insurance matters, the insurer has to have a pot of money reserved in the event of having to pay out a claim and for expenses (such as fees). Lawyers will make a recommendation to the insurer about how much should be reserved, but the insurer if free to accept/reject the advice. It can get slightly tricky when a claim is not easily quantifiable.
Scotland-wide sessions have recently involved the law of prescription (known as limitation in England, but there are conceptual differences), generally known as time-bar. If an action has prescribed, this acts as a complete defence and prevents the action from proceeding. There are different time periods for different causes of action. Over the last little while, the law in Scotland has changed and the courts have also been busy determining how prescriptive periods should be interpreted. These sessions are always a helpful reminder of where to start looking when faced with a potential prescription issue.
External conferences
I have recently attended three external conferences. The WS Society in Scotland ran their annual Commercial Disputes Conference and Professional Negligence Conference in the historic Signet Library in Edinburgh (adjacent to the Court of Session, Scotland’s version of the English High Courts).
Both followed a similar format of a judge giving the opening keynote speech followed by various practitioners (solicitors and counsel) delivering sessions on key cases coming out of the courts in the past year and new developments. It was incredibly interesting to hear their different insights, have the opportunity to ask questions and network with them at the lunch hour.
The third conference I attended was run by Edinburgh Law Seminars and was the ‘Contract Law Update 2022’ session with Lorna Macgregor and Laura Richardson, academics at the University of Edinburgh Law School. It was a half-day conference which gave us academics’ point of view to the cases coming out of the Court and whether this differed from solicitors’/practitioners’ views.
CMS events
CMS also hosts or presents at a variety of events. This can be done through departments, sector groups or committees. For example, the CMS Women’s Committee recently held an event with Ife Thomas. Ife was a dancer is now an author and speaker who writes and talks about how to build confidence and self-esteem.
Finally, not strictly an event per se but as some of you may know, CMS lawyers are part of a team who run the UK Supreme Court blog. The UKSC recently heard a Reference from the Lord Advocate (one of the Law Officers of Scotland) on whether Scotland could hold a second independence referendum. We at CMS divided ourselves into groups to cover the two days of the hearings and we blogged in real time the arguments being made by the Lord Advocate (for the Scottish Government) and the Advocate General (for the UK Government). I was part of the first day of blogging and you can find our live feed HERE, and day two HERE.
Don’t forget….
I do hope you enjoy the little blogs I have in this series and I hope it encourages you to apply to CMS. Do remember that applications are now open for the CMS Academy which is taking place next summer. All of my top tricks and trips for applications, interviews and assessment centres are HERE. Good luck!
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