Ed Jones, Access Legal’s senior project manager
By Legal Futures Associate Access Legal
Access Legal’s most accessed learning courses in the last year have highlighted that law firms are still focused on strengthening their risk management strategies for anti-money laundering (AML), cybersecurity and compliance, using comprehensive courses to address challenges and help them and their teams minimise risks across the board.
Analysis of the number of legal professionals signing up for courses offered by Access Legal Learning has revealed that firms are prioritising areas such as compliance, cybersecurity, team welfare, and safeguarding their reputation to ensure they continue to avoid threats and provide an excellent, secure service to their clients.
Between July 2023 and June 2024, the top 10 courses taken by over 120,000 UK legal professionals reflect some of the key challenges firms are facing, including the Post Office scandal which shined a spotlight on lawyers and ethics, several high-profile cyber attacks, and changes to the flexible working regulations.
The ‘Anti-Money Laundering for Law Firms’ course was most popular with more than 26,000 professionals seeking to enhance their knowledge, with more than 19,000 signing up for ‘Practical Cybersecurity for Law Firms’. Others included ‘Equality and Diversity for Law Firms’ which had 16,000 sign-ups and ‘Conflict of Interest’ saw 10,000 legal professionals take the course.
Another study by Access Legal, part of The Access Group, backed up this data and further showed that law firms are prioritising risk management topics in their training. Firms outlined that data protection is the most common, with 51% of them prioritising it, followed closely by AML (anti-money laundering) at 49%.
Discussing the focus on risk, Ed Jones, senior product manager at Access Legal, said: “Managing risk is vital for law firms, it safeguards their reputation, ensures compliance and secures client trust. Over the last year in particular, the importance of managing risk has increased due to increased cyber attacks, changing regulations and high-profile industry events, which have reminded firms of the number of risks and the importance of combatting them – and I think that’s why we have seen this trend in legal learning.”
As a leading provider of software and services to the legal market, Access Legal provides 68 courses, from compulsory CQS training to SRA-accredited codes of conduct, all to help firms safeguard their business, support compliance and the personal development of legal practitioners to support them in delivering exceptional services to clients.
Beyond the training courses, Access Legal provides law firms with a wide suite of solutions to support their practice, people and client strategies, including increased productivity and efficiency. Products include software for legal compliance, case management, practice management, law specific solutions and business software, as well as a cloud-hosting services which adds another layer of data safety and security to a firm.
Access Legal launched in 2021 and more than 3,500 UK law firms currently benefit from its solutions. Its client portfolio includes The MAPD Group, Minster Law, Wolferstans Solicitors and Neves Solicitors LLP. Access Legal is part of The Access Group, one of the UK’s leading providers of business management software to mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, USA and Asia Pacific. Access Legal is part of The Access Group.
For more information about how Access Legal can support a law firm, visit: https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/legal/
