Head of Professional Development at US Law Firm to £100,000

Leading and growing US law firm is looking to recruit a Head/Manager of Professional Development, this is a brand new position in London and the firm.  This role will have three main points of responsibility, supporting the Director of Professional Development, the SRA New Continuing Competency Regime and the Trainee Training Program.  Duties will include to analyse training needs for London lawyer and trainee population and develop tailored training programmes to match identified needs, including e-learning programmes, support progress of personal developments plans, assess career development needs, and liaise with key Practice Group partners, scrutinise and vet requests from individual lawyers to attend external training courses/conferences and manage budget, deliver or source external providers for local London training initiatives and programmes, build relationships with strong set of external consultants to ensure effective design and delivery, oversee Firm involvement in INN group consortium training programmes in PG areas such as litigation, corporate, employment, tax, develop and establish processes for lawyer mentoring, coaching and sponsorship programmes, design and manage robust evaluation process of Learning & Development (L&D) activities, support and add value to the training initiatives of the Firm’s specialists, create communication plan for implementation of new SRA regime, ensure that Professional Development programmes align with the SRA Competence Statement, ensure that application of Competence Statement to an individual lawyer’s Professional Development plan reflects level of qualification, practice area and role, e.g. management responsibilities, establish structure and processes to support and monitor progress of lawyers in meeting and having clear evidence of the SRA prescribed requirements: that they have reflected on their L&D needs, planned how they will address those needs, taken action, recorded those activities and evaluated them, draft template documents for use by lawyers e.g. Development Plan and Development Record, meet regularly on one to one basis with lawyers to support and monitor SRA continuing compliance, work closely with Legal Talent team in connection with associate annual review/evaluation process: will be an important starting point for the reflection and planning of associate training needs each year, evaluate compliance tracking solutions for new or existing LMS platforms and report to COLP and Director of Risk in relation to each lawyer’s ability to make the Annual Declaration.  With regard to the Trainee Training program you will tasked with assisting with the compulsory PSC training courses and lunchtime in-house training programmes and the NQ in-house transition training programme.  Applicants must have previously be qualified as a lawyer to 3 year PQE or worked as a professional development coach, have experience of consulting with senior Professional Development specialists and lawyer stakeholders to establish learning needs and to scrutinise and advise on most effective solutions, have strong influencing skills to ensure key stakeholders are supportive of L& D activities and are completing those activities, be a confident and engaging presenter and facilitator comfortable in delivering programmes to lawyer audiences at all levels, a strong understanding of Learning Management Systems and have experience with assessment centres and psychometric testing.