James Lovelock, Law Firm Managing Partner.

James had taken the traditional route to become a successful lawyer and law firm partner. He had studied law at Otago, gone into practice, and had worked his way up through a couple of law firms in a couple of cities to become a commercial law partner.

However despite his success, over time James felt increasingly drawn to management rather than law – partly because he sensed that many law firms struggled with the balance between being client focused and effectively managing their own business. He therefore left the firm where he was a partner and shortly afterwards moved back to Dunedin, where he took a drop in pay to become Webb Farry’s Practice Manager – a role which was 'mainly operational in focus at that time'.

"After two to three years in that role I began looking for some relevant study options to further extend myself. At that stage my only formal qualification was a law degree. There were really two things I wanted to achieve:

• A further qualification to build on and validate / verify the management experience I had gained.
• Some management-focused study that would enable me to further learn on the job and was ‘big picture’ orientated.

Information about the CAPL process seemed to fit these goals and James became a CAPL candidate for the Bachelor of Applied Management (Strategic).

I found the process really good – it pretty much reflected what I hoped it would be. It gave me an opportunity to look back on what I had done – how, why, all the drivers at work. It really enabled me to draw upon my practical experience by analysing it and using it as a learning experience.

"What I was particularly pleased about was that it was what it said it was – not a nice tidy ‘academic’ programme but instead something focused on real and practical learning with your own experience as the base. It got you reading about different theories and ideas out of genuine interest, as a means of analysing your own decision making and learning from that how to improve your overall management practice.

In the process of drawing together a presentation I really did learn a lot – more than I expected really and in the end I was definitely pleased I had undertaken the process. While it was nice to get a degree at the end of it, what was most important was that I felt it really shifted my thinking forward. It made the critical split between the operational and the strategic very apparent in a way I hadn’t previously completely appreciated.

Overall the APL process has made me much more conscious of what I am doing, about checking on myself in terms of not letting the day to day matters overwhelm me. It’s now much harder for such things to get the chance to block longer term planning and achievement for our business.

I’m quite sure that this greater strategic focus which I learnt to be aware of and implement through the APL process, is a significant contributor to the ongoing growth and success of our law firm. In the same way I’m certain it’s part of what has enabled me to step up further to the Managing Partner role I now have with the business."