It is quite common to find yourself getting more interested in some parts of a course and struggling with certain other areas. Even if the course seems perfect for you, there may be some parts of the syllabus that you simply do not find as interesting as some other aspects of the course material. For instance, with the Legal Secretaries Diploma, you may find yourself more interested in specific areas of the law and less able to focus on other areas of study. 

We have been running our Legal Secretaries Diploma course at Regent’s College in Regent’s Park for over 10 years and find it to be an excellent venue for our Students. The college recently became Regent’s University, after it received confirmation from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that it met the criteria for a university title. 

An intensive scrutiny process was led by the Quality Assurance Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which included a governance audit, a check on student numbers and a consultation on the proposed change in name.

Douglas Scott Legal Recruitment is helping to judge the inaugural Legal Support Staff Awards, which have been organised by GEM Legal Training and will take place at Bolton De Vere White’s hotel in September 2013.

Gemma Rush, pictured here, is a recruitment consultant at Douglas Scott.  She is judging the Legal Secretary of the Year award – tipped to be one of the busiest categories. Gemma has worked at Douglas Scott for over two years where she manages the legal support desk. Prior to joining Douglas Scott, she worked in human resources at the Co-operative Bank.

Recognising the employees who are so important to the success of law firms, the Legal Support Staff Awards are being organised by GEM Legal Training to assist legal firms across England and Wales by rewarding talent at every level of the business infrastructure.

This month we had one of the highlights of the parliamentary year, the Queen’s Speech. This is the official announcement of what new laws the government plans to introduce in the year ahead. One proposal that stood out was a change to the protection available when you purchase faulty digital content online. The change is intended to bring this area of law up to date, which might strike you as slightly ironic as the announcement was being made by the Queen from the grand throne in the House of Lords in an arcane ceremony. 

CareersINFO produce careers job profile films for young people and are looking to create film content for their online careers resource Skills Explorer: http://www.skillsexplorer.com/. Skills Explorer gives users a chance to explore their skills and career options through videos.

The main aim is to educate young people in schools about the different work opportunities available to them. To that end, Skills Explorer is a free new way for students to connect with world-of-work job profile films, giving users a chance to explore their skills and career options like never before.

Skills Explorer supports classroom, workshop and one-to-one career discussions with tailor-made talking points, learning opportunities and next steps for students, careers advisers and teachers alike.

This month I thought I would share a few tips for MS Word that will save you time and hopefully stop you from pulling your hair out on those days when you just can’t make Word do what you want it to.

Comparing documents in MS Word

Sometimes you may need to compare two documents and track any differences. This comes in handy when you are trying to see which version of a document was created first or even if you have two copies of a large document and you wish to see, without reading the whole thing, if it has been tampered with.

On the whole it is, although some peculiar situations come up sometimes, and I am going to recount three of them to you!

R v Collins [1972] 2 All ER 1105 

One summer’s evening, a Friday in 1972, a 19-year-old, blond, good-looking chap had been out on his own to a local pub in Colchester, Essex. Little did he know, as he downed several pints of beer, that before the night was out he would become the lead player in a case that subsequently went from the Essex Assizes, where he was convicted of burglary with intent to commit rape contrary to s.9 (1)(a) of the Theft Act 1968, to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division where his conviction was quashed (R v Collins [1972] 2 All ER 1105). The Assize Courts, by the way, were disbanded at the end of 1972 by The Courts Act 1971 and replaced by the Crown Court.

Legal aid is a way to offer legal advice and support to people who cannot afford to pay for it themselves. It has been one of the basic pillars of the welfare state since it came into being. But new changes that came into effect in early April in England and Wales have removed legal aid funding from various areas of civil law, including family disputes and social welfare benefits advice as well as housing and debt problems. The Government claims that resources are extremely tight and that spending on legal aid the way we have is no longer an option. According to official sources, the new cuts will save £350 million from a £2.1 billion budget.

In October 2012, David Cameron made a statement about the prison system and that prisons should be made to work for the offenders. He also said that punishment and rehabilitation should in fact take equal precedence in preventing crime. The Prime Minister said that the debate on punishment had become too ‘black or white’, and that the prison system should be one that has a positive and rehabilitative impact on an inmate’s life, rather than merely a punitive one. 

Why do you need rapport?

Competition is incredibly tough in the law profession today. Having a good interview technique will be crucial if you are to land a traineeship or job. Rapport is the connection between two people – the spoken and unspoken words that say ‘We are on the same page’. It is the art of making someone feel comfortable and accepted. To create rapport, we need to know how to connect with others, regardless of their age, gender, ethnic background, or mood, or the situation.