Legal coaching is the integration of professional techniques from business coaching into legal work. This can be done selectively as needed within the framework of the advisory or negotiation mandate, but will usually be done through a self-contained coaching process in a mandate. Similar to mediation, the client chooses whether, how and when coaching should be included in the mandate or should be used in addition. Legal coaching, as a specialised form, is always applied in relation to a legally relevant decision-making process and, unlike coaching and, incidentally, mediation, cannot be used by non-lawyers. At the same time, the legal expertise in legal coaching can address the client's concerns in a much more individual way than in mere counselling.

It was developed primarily for more effective client communication, but it also strengthens the client relationship in the long term and leads directly to greater client satisfaction. At the same time, coaching leads to more reflection and an increase in communication and leadership skills on the part of the coach. This benefits not only the legal coach but also his or her staff.

Coaching is not a protected term and many people today think that they have to call classical counselling modern coaching. However, on the one hand, this deception lacks the bite, i.e. the effectiveness of the coaching techniques, which can only be learned with a profound training. On the other hand, professional coaching also stands for certain quality standards and ethical guidelines to protect clients from harm by amateur coaches.

Dr Tutschka, who trained in coaching in the country of origin of coaching after 10 years as a lawyer in the USA, developed legal coaching as a method after returning to Europe between 2012-2016.

Discover Legal Coaches in Interview at CLP Academy.

The professional training in legal coaching, the so-called Legal Coaching Training Program, has been offered worldwide exclusively by the CLP Academy since 2016. Dr. Geertje Tutschka, PCC exclusively developed the training curriculum and concept for this and is still a trainer today. In doing so, she can build on her experience as part of the training team in post graduate legal training at the Distance Learning University of Hagen, Master's programme in Law.

It is true that more and more lawyers are taking coaching courses for personal development and are integrating what they have learned into their work. Mediators also repeatedly refer to the application of their mediation training outside of mediation as coaching. However, coaching is neither mediation, nor counselling, teaching, training, public speaking or therapy. It can also only be used to a limited extent in the leadership relationship. Nevertheless, professional coaching training primarily focuses on the personality of the coach and helps to achieve a deeper understanding of one's own strengths and weaknesses, conscious communication and human interaction, and thus usually personal maturity.

The training in Legal Coaching consists of four modules:

1. Coaching
2. Training (general coaching training)
3. Training (legal coaching training)
4. Mentoring

And can only be completed by lawyers or comparable professions who also have a certain amount of professional and life experience. The curriculum of the coaching training is based on the international quality standards of the largest professional association of professional coaches, the International Coaching Federation (ICF). As an extra-occupational 6-month post graduate training, it has always been designed as a distance learning course in at least 2 modules and will be conducted completely as a distance learning course for the first time from 2021.

You can find out more about the training and the current training courses at the CLP Academy.

As a lawyer, Dr Geertje Tutschka, PCC focuses on scientificity, fact-based evaluation and logical cause-effect relationships. She developed Legal Coaching with this approach.

Since coaching is not a legally protected method, the profession of coach is not defined by law and coaching training does not fall under the jurisdiction of the state, as is the case with legal training, it is all the more important to demand content orientation and tested quality.

For 25 years, the world's largest professional association for coaches has been working for uniform, scientifically proven and evaluable quality standards and with the 8 core competencies and ethical guidelines has now set professional standards for a quarter of a century that are recognised worldwide.

As a specialist in leadership, she knows the pitfalls when coaching is applied in the leadership relationship with the buzzword "New Work".With her many years of experience as President of ICF Germany, she knows the current coaching market and its developments like no other. As head of the coaching award Prism Award, she stands for excellent quality in coaching programmes: with well-trained and certified coaches and coaching trainings that meet international requirements.

She brings this experience to the training in legal coaching.