Hogan Lovells have created a 'business school' that equips its young lawyers with the skills needed to start-up businesses.
This is not legal skills, but an understanding of the basics of running a business.
It has, Legal Cheek reports, trained some 250 young lawyers that have gone on to advise some 60 young and start-up businesses, resulting in some £4m of investment into those businesses.
This is the kind of marketing initiative that is so simple, extremely clever, and clearly delivering terrific results.
It empowers young lawyers, and equips them with skills that will last a lifetime. And for a firm like Hogan Lovells it opens up a stream of work that would have perhaps headed to much smaller firms.
It is really clever marketing, and one that other firms would do well to examine and copy.
The City’s first law firm business school is set to spur a host of rivals as corporate solicitors wake up to the need to educate new recruits in the ways of the commercial world. Hogan Lovells‘ Business and Social Enterprise training program (HL BaSE) — which teaches trainees and junior lawyers about the basics of business, and provides them with the tools to go on and advise start-ups — has trained up 250 rookies within the first year of its existence. And it’s proving to be quite the success. HL BaSE has allowed the firm to expand its legal advice and business support practice to 60 social enterprises, creating over 80 jobs in the space of four years. The lawyers involved have provided more than 2,700 hours of legal advice, facilitating £4.1 million of investment.