Last week, around 50 of us got together at our annual retreat to catch up, socialise and listen to some inspiring and informative talks.
Accessible, different and human is how we define ourselves at TLD. These speakers helped us to reflect on what this means and to connect meaningfully with how these attributes translate to our lives and work.
First up, we heard from Gerry Lawrence and Brian Proffitt, of Freeman Clarke who gave us a fascinating talk on AI. As “embracing challenge” is one of our core values at TLD, we realised how important it is to face our concerns about AI head on. Gerry and Brian guided us through some of the AI applications that are already shaping our lives, what it can and can’t do, and how it might develop and evolve in the future.
Then we heard from Claire Sanders of Being Human which was a perfect follow on from the previous talk. In this session, Claire tackled the fear of whether lawyers are heading towards extinction to be replaced by tech and AI. She helped us to focus on the unique attributes that humans alone can offer and how these are the very characteristics to develop and to bring to our clients as very human lawyers.
And finally, we heard from the wonderful Emma Hallam from Owning It who spoke to us about resilience and always looking for the silver lining. Drawing on her own experiences as the mother of a child with a life-limiting illness, this interactive workshop helped us to think of ways to build resilience-thinking into our home and work lives. We learnt how resilient thinking helps us and those around us, how to power-up our resilience levels when low, and how to foster the habits of a resilient mind to help us thrive. By the end of the session, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
What we learned from all these talks is to lean into our uniquely human attributes – to embrace technology to make our lives and work easier so we can concentrate on the strategic, interesting parts of our roles and to harness the powers of resilience and positivity that make us accessible, different and human.
