Legal Careers Conference

We are writing this 24 hours after the event which took five months of intensive planning. And it was all over in six hours.

It all started with a concept, to provide our members and other Staffordshire University Law School students with an insight into the legal world. The world that they would be joining once they leave the safety of university life.

The second aspect, who did we want to talk? We wanted the traditional law focussed speakers, the barristers and the solicitors. But who else?? We sat down and discussed who we would like. We wanted those that would inject a bit of colour in a black and white world. Therefore, after much research and networking, we invited the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, Army Legal Services, Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, Nigel Meadows, Margaret Owens, Mr Paul Cliff, David Bowen, Gary Cook, and HHJ Fletcher CBE.

An accidental invite to dinner, and an actual invite to open the conference, and we managed to get hold of our Vice- Chancellor, Professor Michael Gunn. An exciting range, we believed! We had dealt with the issues of who, but now we had to deal with the issue of where and when. This factor, we had issues with.

At Staffordshire University, on a Wednesday afternoon, all undergraduate teaching is completed at 1pm. This was ideal for us, this was our target audience, the people, out of our membership, that we believed that could gain the most out of attending this event. So that was a day and a time sorted, Wednesday, 1pm onwards.

Location was our next item on the to-do list. Originally, it was intended that we would use a room that most Law Students would be familiar with, and a location that we as a society were familiar with. It is a location that is close to the Law School. However, issues were apparent, and after some negotiation we agreed to host the event in the Film Theatre. This is a cinema room on campus that can double up as lecture room. It is a quirky location. One that, actually, in hindsight worked well for a series of talks.

So that was location and the time of the event, organised.

This left us with the catering and final details to be arranged.

Catering. Oh food, why you trouble us most? Catering was not something we could do to a good enough standard on our budget. Enter Law School and Ruby Hammer. Ruby Hammer is a Senior Lecturer and in charge of the Staffordshire Graduate, an aspect that will get explained later. Amazed at what we had managed to achieve, and without a blink, she agreed to deal with the catering through the Law School.

Tea, Coffee, Juice and Biscuit. A banquet!! In hindsight, we should have asked for more, or done it ourselves, because it meant that we had control of the freshness and amount of time the food stayed at the location. However, the refreshments, went down a storm and were nearly finished half way through the event.

The final details.

Marketing! Oh you woe us so. We had to make sure that every student was aware of the event and that they were aware of the details. Countless announcement were made, in many different forms. Social Media was involved, the event was tweeted about, Facebook’d and Blackboard was utilised, a virtual learning environment.

However, this was not reaching every one. So we turned to the old-fashioned, yet highly effective method of paper based advertising.

Posters were printed, thanks to Ruby, and flyers were printed by us. Then in the evening, when no-one stirs in the Law School, they were stuck to every available door. One student remarked that you could not move without seeing one.

So, we could class marketing a success!

The aim of the conference was to provide students with a vast amount of information as was humanly possible, so we made up packs that each student would receive on arrival at the conference.

They each got a Welcome letter, a schedule for the day, an evaluation form, a piece of card to collect their evidence for the Staffordshire Graduate aspect of the event and a brochure from LawCareers.net and some lined paper- to encourage them to take notes. Each person that attended the event, was provided with a SUAS business card, so they could contact us again.

Now, back to the actual date.

Date: Wednesday 12th November 2014

Location: Film Theatre.

We were booted and suited.

The Vice-Chancellor arrived, on time! We set out the information that each student needed to hear.

Then our first issue. The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators cancelled due to sickness. We managed to plug the gap and waited out for the Army Legal Services to arrive.

Army Legal Service arrived on time, what else could you expected? They gave a talk that amused and informed. It provided a good insight in to the career and we all learned something that we did not originally know.

Then was the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. We had been in contact with Anne-Marie for a while and in fact had met with her on several different occasion. She provided a very informative talk, which made people pay attention to the opportunity that this Institute does offer for those that graduate with a Law degree.

Then we should have had Ms. Margaret Owen, unfortunately she didn’t make the journey up due to train cancellations and other issues with transport. We were looking forward to hear her talk about her work and the countless foundations and charities that she is involved in.

Mr Nigel Meadows, the chief coroner at Manchester Coroner’s Court, and a person who has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, talked us through the considerable career that he has, injected with a few jokes.

Then arrived Mr Paul Cliff (Criminal Barrister), Mr David Bowen (Trainee Solicitor) and HHJ Fletcher. They were a total blast. With a sense of humour and some advice for the challenges, they closed the conference on a high.

Any last comments?

Well, on hindsight (a beautiful thing, we have been told), there are a few changes that we could have made.

• We could learn to hide our stresses more. We need to learn the ability to hide our emotions when something goes wrong.

• We need to improve our presentation skills. Just to speak clearer and to project our voices.

• Next time, maybe not host such a long event, it is tiring for us and those that are attending.

However, the fact that it was the first time we had hosted an event like this, we feel that we did well.

We all hope that those that did attend, enjoyed it.

To those that came and spoke to our students, I hope you enjoyed coming to speak to our students, and will be happy to return again.

We want to extend our heartiest thanks!

SUAS :)