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Competency-based training

The Institute provides competency-based skills training.

Skills training (for lawyers) has been defined as:

Training which teaches the underlying and fundamental skills that lawyers use, singularly or combined, to enable them to perform the specific transactions required in practice.

Skills-based training does not focus on the sequential and procedural steps of carrying out transactions, but does provide opportunity for lawyers to practice the skills by applying them to a range of transactions representative of the work they will be doing

Skills are enduring, whereas transactions are finite and ever changing.

"Trainees are equipped with the skills necessary for legal practice ... they learn how to do ... by practising doing"During the course, trainees will be equipped with the actual skills necessary for legal practice, rather than a mere knowledge of those skills; that is, they learn how to do (by practising doing), as well as what to do.

For example, rather than being taught about interviewing techniques and assessed on their knowledge of the interviewing process, trainees are coached in practising interviewing techniques, and are assessed on their conduct of an interview.

Similarly, rather than being asked to outline the components of a defended hearing in a criminal matter, trainees will first be coached, and then assessed, on their conduct of a defended hearing – involving the delivery of an opening address, conduct of examination-in-chief and cross-examination, and the delivery of a closing address.