During a trainee’s training contract or period of recognised training, the aim is develop several skills to ensure that as a trainee you meet the SRA standards to qualify as a Solicitor.
The key elements of each skill – and the type of experience that will help trainees to develop that skill – are specified in the Practice Skills Standards.
Trainees develop the skills through a mixture of the following activities:
completing work and tasks by themselves
assisting others
observing experienced practitioners.
So during the TC, the supervisor will ensure that they have experienced a range of different work to develop those skills.
One way of tracking learning is by keeping a training record or a training diary. The SRA provides a template which is a good overview of this:
This lists the client matter you are working on, who allocated the work, the type of task completed and the skills shown in the Practice Skills Standards. As experience builds up, this record also grows and it is such a good exercise to read back on your work and what skills are developed but also what skills you want to improve on.
I have been following this, both as a paralegal and Trainee Solicitor - it is a very useful 'training log' to keep!
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