In-House Training
for Law Firms
Three ways firms work with us
You can work with us in one of the following ways.
An hour or two
A talk or working session at a quarterly meeting, a forum, a women’s day event, the year-end function or the first morning of the year.
Time at the firm
A session on one problem, a morning with the leaders, a full day, or a series across the year, shaped around what your firm needs. We train, and we listen, and afterwards you hear what we saw and what would help.
The continuing work
Leadership coaching, sessions for a team, or a structured programme over several months, designed around what the first sessions showed. Quoted on what surfaced.
Firms that measure hours and never measure late-afternoon decision quality are auditing the wrong thing.
Sonja Cilliers, PMRI
Every session comes from the same place: we know what your firm is like on a Tuesday in November, because one of us has lived it since 1999. The work will stay demanding; that is legal. What can change is how well your people think, decide and hold up inside it, and that is what we train.
How we work with the firm
Most firms start with a conversation and then time together: at your offices, online, or a mix of the two, in whatever form suits the firm. That can be a session on one problem, a morning with the partners, a full day, or a series of shorter sessions across the year. We train, and we listen while we are with you, and afterwards you hear in plain terms what we saw and what would help. The work then continues, if you want it to, with coaching for the leaders, sessions for a team, or a structured programme. How the engagement works.
If you already know what the firm needs, these are the sessions we bring, each on one problem every firm recognises. Pick one, or build a series across the year.
Productivity Strategies for Legal Professionals
Legal productivity that protects output quality. Built for interrupt-driven work, unpredictable workloads, and high cognitive switching costs.
Critical Thinking Skills for Legal Professionals
Structured argument evaluation, assumption identification, and sound decision-making under uncertainty, including how time pressure compromises legal reasoning.
Leadership in Law
Managing high-performing individuals under pressure, building trust in adversarial cultures, and sustaining team performance across demanding periods.
Team Performance in Legal Environments
From silos to synergy. Clearer role ownership, more effective collaboration, and the structural factors behind duplication and accountability gaps.
Burnout Prevention and Cognitive Load Management
How sustained cognitive overload develops in legal practice, and how to manage it before decision-making, output, and professional endurance decline.
Inclusive Cultures in Legal Practice
A neuroscience-based approach to unconscious bias, psychological safety, and building team cultures where excellence and fairness operate together.
Also for firms: The First Five Years, a structured programme for candidate attorneys and newly admitted associates, built around a working week and delivered at the firm or online.
Every session is built on how the brain works inside the distinct discipline of legal practice.
What it costs
Three figures a managing partner can take to the partners’ meeting.
The first conversation
An hour on Teams or the telephone, no proposal required. If we cannot help, we will say so.
Time at the firm
Quoted on the format and the size of the firm: a single session, a morning or half day, a full day, or a series. Every version includes preparation, a workbook for every participant, and a conversation with the directors afterwards on what we saw. Travel and accommodation outside Gauteng are added at cost.
The continuing work: quoted on what surfaced
Coaching, team sessions and a structured programme are scoped on what the first sessions showed. The first session is the commitment; the rest is a conversation.
For newly appointed partners and team leaders, without a workshop day
The Leadership Dilemma in Law is a recorded PMRI webinar that firms buy for the attorneys they have just put in charge of people. Why strong practitioners struggle as leaders, how to delegate without taking the file back, how to give hard feedback without the fallout, and how to keep a team steady through pressured periods. About 90 minutes, with a workbook, and it never expires.
The Leadership Dilemma in Law
R450 per person. Set the number of attorneys at checkout; every additional seat is 10% off, each person gets their own login and workbook, and one invoice goes to the firm.
When a standard session is not quite right
Two options, depending on how clear the problem already is.
Customised Training
You know what the problem is, and none of the six sessions covers it exactly. We design a session or a short programme for your firm. It starts with a conversation.
About Customised Training
Strategic Consulting for Firm Leadership
You are not sure what the problem is, only that something is not working. We work with the partners first to find out where the pressure is building, then agree what training, if any, will fix it.
About Strategic ConsultingPMRI also delivers in-house training for advocates, chambers, and groups at the referral Bar. Training for advocates
Next Step
Tell us the size of the team and what the firm is dealing with. We will reply within one business day with a recommended starting point and a price.
Also published in De Rebus
Cognitive Performance in Practice, PMRI’s monthly column in De Rebus, the journal of the South African legal profession. Three recent pieces; the full list is on the Authors and Publications page. For PMRI’s own articles, see the library.
The mind comes back: how legal professionals recover clear thinking under load
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The divorce file you carry home: emotional regulation for legal professionals in family law
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Holding the room: the difficult client, the high emotion and the practitioner who has to stay steady
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Other people’s worst days: secondary trauma in legal practice
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The letter that made you furious: staying regulated when the other side goes on the attack
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The night before court: what anticipatory anxiety does and how to bring it down
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Why you are short with the people you love after a day of being patient with everyone else
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