December 07 Around the States - Queensland

 

As the year fast draws to an end, it is an excellent time to reflect on what has been achieved and what is to come in the New Year.

Consistent with our objectives, the speakers in our final monthly meetings for the year covered a broad subject area.

• Leadership and creating high performance teams was presented by Mark Richards. Mark is a Practice CEO, but with a commissioned military officer pedigree (with recent active service). As such, he brought an entertaining and challenging perspective to “leading under pressure”.

• Planning for Disaster Recovery was presented by Owen Hile. Owen covered the trips and traps in IT infrastructure, IT risk management, and recovery strategies…. but with the added insights gained from long standing expertise working in law office installations.

• Ashley Tulley’s presentation on selling skills for lawyers was a “back to basics” journey designed to help Practice Managers and Principals work on getting the balance right – with an emphasis on the qualities of work/life balance.

• In our last meeting for the year, Mark Jenkins presented on how firms can create additional value by extracting more from their relationships with their bankers. The presentation provided an insight for many whose view of their banking relationships had previously been “going through the motions.”

A reminder… in Queensland we record our presentations on DVD. These are available for purchase by members (discounted for rural members) either singularly or as a yearly subscription.

Melbourne was the host city in October this year for the ALPMA annual conference. Whilst many have already written about this, and various articles can also be found on the web site, I would again commend the conference to you as a “must” for your development as a practice manager in future years; not only for the speakers’ content but also for the sponsors’ trade display and for the networking .

ALPMA enjoys a very constructive relationship with Queensland Law Society. November 14 saw another of our joint efforts with a half-day HR seminar covering issues of values and performance, how to best use HR professionals, stress management, and change management.

2008 will bring renewed vigour after the holidays. We are currently planning an exciting speakers program for the Monthly Meetings that will help all members add value to the practice of law. I encourage members to check the web site for these and also keep an eye out in the QLS journal Proctor, where we regularly advertise the speakers’ program.

Finally, I would like to thank the Queensland Executive and Jenny Watson for their support during 2007, and also welcome our new Executive members Giles Watson and Maryruth Webster to the team. I take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year.

Kind regards

Graeme McFadyen