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The Dickson Poon School of Law

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Professional Law Institute

The Professional Law Institute at The Dickson Poon School of Law brings together a number of initiatives focusing on legal education and training in the context of professional practice.

About the Professional Law Institute

The Professional Law Institute (PLI) provides a focal point for practice-based education, research and civic engagement, as well as strengthening connections to practitioners and stakeholder institutions in the heart of legal London. The PLI team, led by our Director of Professional the Professional Law Institute, Michael Butler, is responsible for leading the Law School’s strategy on the development of new professional education courses.

The Institute brings together a host of connected activities including the King’s Legal Clinic, extra-curricular Professional Skills modules, industry events, and a new MSc in Law & Professional Practice.  It also supports mooting, the work of the Careers & Employability team, and practice-based research.  

Law & Professional Practice MSc

The PLI’s innovative and professionally focused programme enables students to train in the foundational and specialist areas of the Law and Practice of England & Wales, whilst gaining expertise in analysis, research, and application to ‘real life’ client and commercially orientated issues in an international context. The two-year postgraduate degree, with the first year available as a stand-alone Postgraduate Diploma, offers graduates without prior legal education or training in the UK a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to law and practice in preparation for the SQEs and a legal career.

Watch a recorded presentation from the PLI team about this innovative new programme >>>

Events 

The Future of Legal Practice lecture series

The way law is being practiced is changing. Business needs are evolving rapidly. In a globalised and strongly competitive market, companies require creative and dedicated lawyers who know how to harness the law, their skillsets and, increasingly, technology, to make their business thrive.  

To respond to these changing demands, in 2019 the PLI launched a lecture series on 'The Future of Legal Practice.' The series attempts to answer questions such as:  what will our clients, now and in the next decades, require from us as (aspiring) legal professionals? How do legal professionals thrive and meet individual and systemic challenges in this ever-changing world?

Students, academics, practitioners and members of the public with an interest in the subject are invited to attend this lecture series.

Click here to find more information about and watch recordings of past lectures.  

 

 

 

Professional Skills modules

The PLI supports the delivery of extra-curricular skills modules for students studying at The Dickson Poon School of Law.  The modules are led by Mihael Jeklic, Director of Professional Skills, and details of the content can be found below.

This module provides an interdisciplinary study of the analytic and cognitive perspectives to decision-making under conditions of uncertainty (when decisions involve unknown future states) and strategic interdependence (when decisions need to consider expected actions of other people). The emphasis is on the aspects of decision-making relevant in professional practice. The knowledge is widely applicable for all aspects of legal work that requires strategic thinking and tactical choices (litigation, negotiation, competition, client management, deal structuring, etc.).

The module has a prescriptive and a descriptive component. In the prescriptive part, the students will receive training in decision analysis, a formal analytical framework for decisions under uncertainty. This set of normative tools is commonly used in capital investments, medical and policy decisions and increasingly employed by law firms advising clients. It provides a risk-neutral, systematic way of evaluating choices and making decisions. The descriptive part of the module focuses on the psychology of poor judgment and decision-making. It is taught in light of the dual process theory, the dominant framework in cognitive neuroscience, which is used to describe and to some extent explain the heuristics and biases in human decision making.

The overarching aim of the module is to inform the students about where decision making can go wrong (descriptive research on poor decision making), as well as to train them to make better decisions.

This module draws upon 30 years of interdisciplinary research in negotiation from the perspectives of law, economics, game theory, and social, cognitive-behavioural and psychodynamic psychology.

It provides comprehensive theoretical background as well as training in negotiation and aims to address the requirements of modern legal practice, where effective legal work often entails negotiations in complex interpersonal settings involving multiple parties and multiple issues, and where deal-making, consensus building, and problem-solving frequently take the central stage.

The module explores the Principled negotiation model, as well as advanced interdisciplinary theory on negotiation, including the Three Tensions model (creating vs claiming value, empathy vs assertiveness, and the principal-agent tension), and the insights from research in cognitive-behavioural psychology.

While the module will provide the participants with the conceptual understanding of the complex interdisciplinary phenomena taking place during negotiation, the focus will be on training in effective practical negotiation. That involves teaching the relevant analytical tools, recognition of interpersonal dynamics, managing the tension between value-creation and value-claiming and dealing with a difficult negotiator. A number of negotiation styles are presented so that participants can adopt the ones that suit them best.

This module has been created to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of how financial statements are prepared to represent the profitability, liquidity and value of a business. The key educational objective of this course is therefore to allow students to full comprehend how the financial statements disclose the performance and position of a business.

On the completion of this module, students will be able to -Understand the key principles underlying financial accounting with an emphasis on understanding, interpreting and using accounting information.-Critically assess the problems and challenges of preparing financial accounts.-Understand the role of accounting information in business organisations and the key information needs of different stakeholder groups.-Prepare a balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement.-Understand the uses and limitation of the information in financial statements.-Employ simple ratio analysis to analyse and interpret accounting information.

Financial statements are prepared to represent the profitability and value of a business and as a consequence provide vital information to owners, managers and other stakeholders about the financial performance and position of a business. The module is therefore designed to support students in understanding how the financial statements identify, measure and communicate information to permit informed judgments and support a wide range of business decisions.

By the end of the module, students will have developed the skills and knowledge needed to record business transactions, make adjustments and prepare a set of final accounts for a business entity.

The nature of the course is practical and applied. The aim will be to apply the techniques and principles of accounting that are learned to different cases in the realm of business operations. The course is taught through a seminar that demonstrate and apply the accounting concepts and their applications to accounting practice. Classroom techniques used will include interactive teaching, group discussions and lectures to provide explanations and enhanced understanding.

No prior knowledge of accounting is assumed.