Lifelong learning, also known as permanent training, is an old pedagogical concept, but today it has gained relevance as a way of adaptation for professionals who want to improve themselves. With the current recession and the need to adapt to the new rules of the globalized world, it became a solution for lawyers as well.
The current dynamics require us to be resilient, adapt, reinvent ourselves, adapt, reformulate our concept of service, productivity and, fundamentally, carry out the digital transformation.
But all of this requires a broad mindset that is constantly learning. In this article, we tell you all about lifelong learning and how it influences the world of lawyers.
I kept reading and learning!
What is lifelong learning:
It is the constant learning that we carry out in a parallel and complementary way to our formal studies. It is a way of defining the accumulation of actions carried out to acquire information regardless of the method or formality.
We could also define lifelong learning as an attitude towards life: being an eternal proactive learner in acquiring knowledge to improve our skills in all areas of the day today.
Lifelong learning can be:
● curricular: when we go to a study center with this philosophy;
● selective: when we choose courses and training instances;
● business training: when our company demands that need from us and offers us training;
● personal: it is when we study on our own without being linked to any educational institution;
● empirical: it is the learning that we obtain from our experiences.
● spontaneous: it is the type of learning that arises from curiosity and does not have a set time to happen.
Next, we will detail each of these modalities so that you discover which of them you identify with the most.
Curricular:
To begin with, this pedagogical paradigm is not new, it is an issue that has been discussed informal education since the constitution of independent nations in Latin America. So much so that if you investigate the subject, you will see that Sarmiento’s famous phrase: ” Man, People, Nation, State: everything is in the humble school benches” is always cited.
Postgraduates, scholarships, isolated courses, seminars, conferences, among many variants, are already part of the curricular offer of universities.
Selective:
This is the modality in which, although it continues to be curricular, it is not framed in a study plan of a career, but in the offer of courses for those who want to adapt the study to their times. Technical courses, updating, short careers, complementary areas, workshops, among other options make up this second group.
Business training:
In the business world, many trends have emerged, such as legal design, which was born in the compliance departments of companies and later expanded to legal studies.
Without a doubt, we must recognize that companies gave prominence and ranked this line of thought as a value. The constant learning of our work team is a competitive advantage.
Personal:
This is the way known to all the curious, intrepid, and innovative who, not having a formal opportunity to acquire knowledge, seek all the possibilities that technology gives them: tutorials, eBooks, post and video classes.
Empirical:
Experience is a great teacher, but it is not the only one. Why do we say this? It is because of that old saying that is attributed to Confucius: ” there are 3 ways of learning: by reflection which is the noblest, by imitation which is the simplest and by experience which is the bitterest “.
Knowing how to learn from our mistakes is a way to train ourselves permanently, but this does not mean that it is necessary to look for mistakes to increase knowledge: we can also learn from successes! Today, there are many digital tools that allow us to gain experience without necessarily having to be a bitter pill.
Spontaneous:
This type of training has to do with the profile of the eternal apprentice, who has that spirit can transform any moment into an instance of training. These formative moments are caused by the attention and predisposition of the receiver, rather than by the proactivity of the sender to teach us something.
Why lifelong learning is important for a lawyer:
For the simple fact that the legal universe is constantly changing. These days, more than ever, we have witnessed the speed at which loopholes formed in this new normal.
If it was already difficult to frame digital currencies that do not respond to any central bank, copyright in a virtual territory that is diffuse and difficult to control, among many other conflicts of interest, what can we say about the current situation in which all countries have to juggle taxation and, at the same time, carry out a mass vaccination?
All this experience served to understand the importance of a strong and reliable rule of law in order to maintain social and economic stability, and for that up-to-date lawyers are needed. Fortunately, digitization also transformed legal practice and helps us meet this challenge.
Eternal students
Lifelong learning is no longer a specific need for a given area, but a fundamental paradigm to be updated and digitally literate, thereby enhancing our productivity. Lifelong learning extrapolates academia to become an economic necessity.
It is essential that you train continuously and, for that, nothing better than having a 100% cloud platform, integrated with all legal information and offering the best courses on-demand online, 24 hours, 7 weekdays.