Head of Legal Learning

London, England, United Kingdom

12/6/2024

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Job Title

Head of Legal Learning

Department

People

Location

Birmingham or London

Reports To

Global Chief Learning Officer

Working Hours

35 hours per week, 9:30am to 5:30pm but additional hours may be required. We are happy to consider agile and flexible working patterns. Our approach to hybrid working allows for up to 40% of time working from home and 60% working in the office, please contact a member of the recruitment team to discuss further.

Firm Description

Hogan Lovells is one of the leading global law firms. Our distinctive market position is founded on our exceptional breadth of our practice, on deep industry knowledge, and on our 'one team' global approach. Formed through the combination of two top international law firms, Hogan Lovells has over 40 offices in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

With a presence in the world's major financial and commercial markets, we are well placed to provide excellent business-oriented advice to our clients locally and internationally. Our people are the key to our success, which is why we seek to recruit and retain the most talented individuals in all regions of our global practice.

In the UK Hogan Lovells has offices in Birmingham and London. The Birmingham office opened in 2015 and has a number of practice areas including Corporate/Commercial, Disputes, Finance and Real Estate, as well as our Legal Delivery Centre and Business Team. The office has recently trebled in size and moved into a new fitted out space in the Colmore Building.

Department

HL Learn, the global Learning and Development team, is part of the firm’s People function and supports the People strategy across each of the firm’s regions (Americas, APAC and EMEA) through a range of global, regional, and local development programs, workshops, e-learning, and other career development activities. Within HL Learn the Legal Learning team are responsible for practice-wide legal training initiatives for junior to mid-level lawyers. These practice-wide training initiatives complement the practice area training driven by partners and knowledge lawyers.

Role Overview

The Head of Legal Learning is a strategic role, working closely with the Global Chief People Officer, Global Chief Learning Officer, Global Head of Talent Management, the firm’s partners, Heads of Knowledge, Knowledge Lawyers, and Practice Group HR Business Partners, lawyers and other Business Team departments. The role is responsible for championing and driving the implementation of the firm's practice-specific skills.

Key Responsibilities / Accountabilities

• Build on existing practice-specific training to set a regional and global strategy for our practice area training. Practice areas focus primarily on Corporate and Finance, Litigation, Global Regulation and IPMT. Work with key stakeholders (e.g. practice area leaders, subject matter experts and knowledge lawyers) to ensure our lawyers have access to best in class legal training, and to leverage the firm’s knowledge and learning to support the firm’s strategic objectives
• Collaborate with HL Learn, Heads of Knowledge, and Knowledge Lawyers to ensure effective deployment and improving and maximize the sharing of legal and practice-specific training resources across the practices
• Manage the Legal Learning team, including day-to-day needs, development, and recruitment; inspire and lead the Legal Training Managers and Legal Training Coordinators through clear articulation of the legal learning practice strategy and their role in fulfilling the strategy
• Work with Information Technology teams to ensure our e-learning and learning management systems and tools are fit for purpose, keep pace with emerging technologies (e.g. AI), and enable us to deliver the legal training programs and processes we need
• Work closely with key stakeholders to ensure that our strategic legal practice-specific learning and objectives are reflected in and consistent with the firm’s approach to changing hybrid working practices, workplace design, DEI, and lawyer career path initiatives
• Keep up-to-date with training and learning trends, law firm business trends, e-learning technology and hybrid working trends, and legal developments; integrate key practice skills and expertise needed for the lawyers of the future into training
• Drive cultural change across the firm in line with HL Learn principles, embed a culture of commitment to legal education excellence, curiosity, continuous learning, innovation, engagement, and exceptional client service delivery
• Monitor uptake of legal learning opportunities and analyze the quality of legal/practice training in order to drive our legal learning strategy and program development
• Participate in the annual budgeting process, and manage the Legal Learning budget.
  
  

Specific duties or responsibilities may be reviewed from time to time to reflect changes in personnel and management structure, staff location or services.

All members of the firm participate in our Responsible Business program.

Person Specification

Qualifications & Training

• The successful candidate should be able to demonstrate previous experience of working in a similar role in a law firm or other professional services entity. Your career will have been characterised by clear patterns of success and achievement
• Lawyer or a background in legal learning with an understanding of practice-specific legal training and the ability to work with subject matter experts across practices.
• A background in technology tools to build a hybrid learning approach
• A credible self-starter with a demonstrable track record of delivering operational success in this area
  
  

General Attributes

• Able to think strategically and translate strategy into deliverable action, understanding and working with local variations to the global legal learning strategy
• Able to lead a regionally dispersed team, while also working collaboratively and collegiately in a globally distributed management team
• Able to build relationships with and take direction from functional leadership and senior stakeholders, understanding cultural differences
• Able to motivate and persuade lawyers to contribute to legal training, and to adhere to legal learning processes
• Able to help deliver or facilitate legal learning sessions and workshops
• Able to demonstrate mastery of both the practice and business of law, and identify new areas of opportunity for legal training to help solve business challenges or improve client service
• Strong understanding of how to adapt learning programs for different learners/environments
• Strong intellectual capacity with the ability to apply new ideas
• Strong leadership, project management, and change management skills, and an ability to build productive relationships
• Exceptional communication and influencing skills; able to operate with credibility at partnership level
• Excellent team player – collaborative, accountable, challenging
• Commercially minded, action-focused, pragmatic.
  
  

Agile Working Statement

Our goal is to embed flexibility across our business by giving everyone the opportunity to work in an agile way, whether as a regular pattern or on an ad hoc basis, and we will be happy to discuss this further.

Equal Opportunities Employment Statement

It is the policy of Hogan Lovells to provide equal opportunities for all employees in relation to recruitment, training and promotion. Decisions in these areas will be made only by reference to the requirements of the job and shall not be influenced by any consideration of racial or ethnic origin, religion, sex , gender and gender identity, age, sexual orientation, marital and civil partnership status, pregnancy or disability.

All vacancies are open to direct applicants. Recruitment agencies; please be advised that we have a preferred supplier list in place for all roles.