Home working and the use of e-learning

Like most of us, life for Legal Executive Laura Rowan changed drastically in 2020, so she shares how she juggled the use of e-learning and working from home.

Lockdown and a total overhaul of our working life hit us all in 2020 without any warning. I transitioned to working at home full-time, juggling my role as a paralegal (part-time) with two young boys, and being in the house for most of my waking hours. It was tough for everyone.

After a while, we hit a stride, learning to work and live in the same environment; getting my head down and getting on with my day-to-day job worked well.

I qualified as a Fellow of CILEX years ago and in order to maintain my accreditation, each academic year I have to complete CPD activities to not only fulfil CILEX’s requirements, but to keep my legal knowledge as fresh and abreast of as much new material and matters as possible.

Pre-COVID, Minster has been fantastic at arranging in-house training, especially in the Serious Injury department. However, since the office seemed such a distant memory, a reality of home and online training was about to become reality.

I frequently completed e-learning sessions and it was the larger topics that caused me to worry, however, I had nothing to fear.

Using the Intranet Webinar Portfolio, I took advice from my Associate on some key topics and engaged in my first session.

My first webinar was regarding amputation claims. I wanted to extend my knowledge as to the understanding of such claims and the use of prosthesis and rehabilitation.

My initial thought of my first webinar was that it was surprisingly engaging. It was really informative and easy to follow which was great since I had no colleagues to bounce ideas or comments with. I found it helpful to take simple notes and made a recording of helpful case law which I may want to refer back to. It was a comfort to know that it wasn’t necessary to take endless notes as I could refer back to it if I could, leaving me more time to really listen and absorb the information – quite refreshing really!

Reaching my CDP target for 2020, whilst it wasn’t easy, was manageable. Much more manageable than I had anticipated, and I learned lots of new things.

Not only the webinars, but Teams calls with my wider team and being part of support groups, we have learned to use electronic communication as a way to speak to each other face to face despite being miles away from one another.

I have also recently engaged in a training session with Dominic Regan, his session are always a treat and he is so very dramatic with his approach I was wondering how well the e-version would fit. It was brilliant. Dominic was his usual self, he also arranged to supply a handout of helpful case law and precedents and even provided his views on the best bottle of red!

Overall, 2020 home learning and online training wasn’t so bad after all. That being said, I CANNOT wait to learn face to face again with my peers!