Browne Jacobson delivers O Shaped training to Government Legal Department teams

Lawyers who advise the Government, and their professional support staff, are being encouraged to adopt an O Shaped mindset after learning about an innovative movement that aims to drive positive cultural change across the legal industry.

The Government Legal Department (GLD) has enrolled corporate and operational teams on a series of O Shaped training programmes delivered by UK and Ireland law firm Browne Jacobson.

Browne Jacobson has provided training to its own teams since becoming the first law firm to partner with the O Shaped movement in 2022, and is now supporting clients to embed the initiative’s purpose and vision into their organisational culture.

O Shaped was founded by former Network Rail general counsel Dan Kayne in 2019. It involves applying five mindsets – Openness, Originality, Optimism, taking Opportunities and taking Ownership – to working with clients to ensure legal teams are valuable and trusted advisers.

Claire Stripp, Head of Talent and Knowledge at Browne Jacobson, and a member of the O Shaped steering board, said: “We’ve found within our firm that the O Shaped mindset really provides a framework to think differently about clients’ challenges and our role in collaborating with them to find solutions. This goes far beyond technical legal skills and traditional added value.

“In addition to this mindset shaping how we work with clients day to day, we are keen to share this with their own legal functions, so it was fantastic to develop this tailored training programme on O Shaped for in-house corporate and operational teams at the GLD.”

The first training session, which covered applying O Shaped principles to stakeholder relationships, took place last October with one of the GLD’s legal teams.

Since then, a modular programme was delivered to the panel services management team between November and February that integrated an O Shaped mindset into their work.

Further sessions are now being explored for the benefit of other operational teams.

The training is the latest example of how Browne Jacobson works in close partnership with in-house lawyers at the GLD via a series of contracts awarded under the Crown Commercial Service legal services panel framework agreement.

Recent appointments for the firm’s public law team include the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Department for Transport.

Peter Ware, Head of Government at Browne Jacobson, said: “Our work with the GLD involves our lawyers collaborating closely with the department’s in-house legal teams so that we effectively work as one team.

“With this in mind, it is important that we are all adopting a similar mindset in how we deliver legal services and O Shaped can be a central ingredient in this approach.”