Every summer, students return to Bermuda looking for gainful employment. Most are smart, motivated, healthily opinionated and tech savvy. The law firm can provide a valuable learning experience through which they can grow and be stretched, irrespective of their disciplinary background. Employers and students can both benefit from the experience and different workgroups harness students creatively in different ways. This article focuses on how the Knowledge Management (KM) Team at Appleby Spurling & Kempe (AS&K) contributes to the development of the young Bermudian minds entrusted to it each year.

These eager young minds are Bermuda's intellectual seedcorn for the future. The yield on tomorrow's harvest depends on its careful propagation and husbandry today.

Many students find summer placements in law firms. Since the practice of law is essentially about the cultivation and sale of a specialist commodity - legal knowledge - a law firm is stimulated by the constant rejuvenation of its intellectual lifeblood.

Not all students are destined for a life in the law. So a rich interdisciplinary mix is recruited, after a careful selection process done in partnership with human resources staff.

“Straight law” hopefuls may work alongside a specialist in modern communications and cultural anthropology and one in criminology. That kind of mix is not unusual; multi-disciplinary breadth of mind is also a breath of fresh air. Industry observation reveals that many MBAs being appointed worldwide to senior or strategic knowledge related roles have backgrounds in comparable disciplines, including psychology, philosophy and the classics.

Our success with students lies partly in the blend of tasks entrusted to them. Like everyone else, they start by paying their dues in doing apparently routine and mundane tasks. They are closely monitored for their attention to detail and thoroughness of approach.

After proving themselves, their mental muscle is tested, by assigning them a handpicked range of analytical or idea-focused projects which could benefit from a fresh pair of eyes.

New minds are also an antidote to “groupthink” - a self-referential complacency, sterile orthodoxy and conformity to which many well-established businesses fall prey.

With this in mind, our students are regularly asked for their opinions and they are not afraid to give one! What we hear may occasionally feel, at first, uncomfortable. We treat it as a learning experience and measure its truth against reality.

Student assignments can involve directed online and paper-based research, participation in informal project meetings, group-based problem solving and “idea labs”. Fresh thinking is incubated or cross-pollinated in supplementary discussions with other students or KM mentors. Some ideas are peer-tested and may be adopted. Others are ploughed back into the previously fallow soil of thinking about new products and services for our “internal market” - mainly lawyers, professional managers and corporate administrators.

Students thus function like a cadre of “rookie consultants” within the KM Team, following the model of MBA placements adopted worldwide. Their workproducts include Briefing Papers, PowerPoint or verbal presentations and research on international trends which may impact the future delivery of legal services.

In their work, students are not “nannied” but given tremendous scope to apply their own intellectual strengths, learn new practical skills and develop greater workplace confidence. KM merely provides one stimulating learning context.

Flexibility, autonomy and self-discovery are balanced by accountability. Students have clear learning outcomes, specific deliverables, strict deadlines. High quality and thoroughness is expected in all their assigned work and presentations. By the end of their placements with the KM Team, from an employer's viewpoint, students are more “rounded” and versatile, enriched by their own workplace “sensemaking” and improvisation. They find and make the necessary connections themselves, having grappled with or mastered new concepts and practices.

Their most valuable learning occurs at the scary threshold of discovery, where existing or newly acquired knowledge is tentatively applied to a problem and new know-how results. And guess what, this is exactly how lawyers and other professionals learn their craft when solving their clients' problems.

Notably, students tell us they enjoy working with us and several come back time and again. Now that's return on investment. The international business community which law firms serve benefits immensely from thoughtfully positioned students with cross-disciplinary backgrounds and robust analytical skills, born of a certain openness and breadth of mind.

Combined with a willingness to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity, young minds can develop resilience for the roller coaster of the long haul.

Interpersonal flair helps, including first class oral and written communication skills. If one cannot articulate persuasively or influence others, or learn to compromise gracefully, chances of long-term success are minimal. These are all highly portable qualities which any healthy business needs to survive and sustain itself in a complex global economy.

In the KM Team at AS&K we like to think that we are doing our small bit to ensure that tomorrow's Bermuda has a sustainable supply of people with these attributes. Consider it our modest contribution to Bermuda's succession planning! Only time will tell whether we have succeeded.

Chris Maiden is the knowledge manager at Appleby Spurling & Kempe. He writes and speaks internationally on Knowledge Management issues. Copies of Mr. Maiden's columns can be obtained on the Appleby Spurling & Kempe web site at www.ask.bm. This column should not be used as a substitute for professional legal advice. Before proceeding with any matters discussed here, persons are advised to consult with a lawyer.