The ELSA

TRAINING IN ELSAELSA & TrainingTraining in ELSA means that an ELSA member should> Receive knowledge about ELSA's philosophy and aims as well as activities andopportunities.> Receive appropriate training in personal skills, i.e. soft skills, to support theacquired knowledge.Through training every ELSA group contributes to creating increasingly internationallyminded individuals as well as it makes individuals attached to ELSA gaingreater benefits from their membership.Li AxrupELSA InternationalELSA & SkillsThrough membership in ELSA and active involvement in our association a person gainsgreater personal skills. This is done through training in hard skills and soft skills. Theseskills are skills that facilitate for individuals and teams to work, communicate and achievethe set aims.Hard skills are more concrete and relate more directly to the work done. Examples areknowledge on the issue - ELSA knowledge - and project management skills. Soft skills onthe other hand are such as team building, conflict management, negotiation and communication.One might differ between the two by saying that the hard skills are the engine in a car,whilst the soft skills are the transmission, translating the engines power into a fast movingmachine.ELSA & our TrainersIn ELSA we do not only use external trainers for our training activities but activate experiencedELSA members and benefit from their profound knowledge and skills.A concrete example of trainers in ELSA are the trainers from our International Trainers Pool, theITP. The ITP is a group of former active ELSA members who travel to different groups to give tailormade training for the persons active in the group/s. Every trainer in the pool has taken partin a training course arranged at the Clifford Chance Academy in Amsterdam. The CliffordChance Academy with its high quality trainings and knowledge on working in internationalenvironments thus contributes to the high quality of our trainers in the ITP.More concretely, the trainers pool of ELSA has currently 24 trainers from 13 different countries,covering countries from Norway to Malta and Kazakhstan to Ireland.12Clifford ChanceIt is well accepted by now that over the last few years there have been fundamental changes in the way that lawfirms function. Clifford Chance is one of a new breed of international law firms which recognise the new challengesposed by globalisation. Operating both nationally and internationally, it is an innovator in the legal servicesfield. Its ambition is to become a new type of law firm combining different legal specialisations with an integratedlocal and international perspective, geared to offering clients all round business advice.To succeed it needs a new type of lawyer. People who are not only professionally excellent but who also feel comfortableworking in teams, across specialisations, jurisdictions and cultures. Clifford Chance doesn’t think that it isenough anymore just to invest a great deal of time and effort in recruiting high caliber students with the potentialto become first-class business lawyers. It is also important that it recruits young lawyers who are interested indeveloping themselves, in achieving individual goals and in taking control of their own careers. With this in mind,Clifford Chance has put in place a pro-active in-firm education strategy designed to help develop and retain itsintellectual capital.Our firm sees the provision of education and training opportunities throughout a lawyer’s career as a strategicinvestment, which can give it a leading edge over the competition. In practice this has meant the creation ofClifford Chance’s own Academy, which adds an array of courses to the traditional on-the-job coaching system. TheAcademy promotes a learning culture across the global firm, which helps lawyers not only improve their legal skills,but also develop their non-legal expertise in such broader areas as project management, development and sharingof knowledge, interpersonal skills and high standards of customer service.