Crafty Counsel is the brainchild of Ben White, a young corporate lawyer who saw who that mid-career in-house counsel were struggling to access the training and development he had taken for granted in private practice. A report by PwC reveals that the top 100 law firms in UK spend 2.7 per cent of their total revenue which equates to nearly £3m per firm on HR and Training. These resources simply don’t exist for many in house teams.

Professional development

Benjamin White, Founder of Crafty Counsel, said: 'Learning and Development was spoon fed and easy in law firm life. All that changed when I moved in house. Suddenly, professional development was my responsibility alone. Nobody’s job was to train me and there was no guarantee of a sizeable budget earmarked to pay for me to stay up to date on legal developments or soft skills. I had to fend for myself. When attending external training, I quickly realised that I was being entirely reactive to whatever the firms that my company instructed happened to be organizing. The quality was patchy, as was the relevance to my job. It doesn’t have to be this way.'

Digital native lawyers

Mr White, who worked at Clifford Chance for seven years prior to moving in house to a Tech Start Up, wanted to create a platform that addressed the particular needs of both in house counsel and expert presenters. Crafty Counsel is designed specifically for digital native lawyers who are more likely to watch TedTalks in the gym or on their commute than want to carve out 90 minutes to join a training webcast. The new start-up has ambitions to be the In House Lawyer’s “secret weapon” for bite sized video updates, and relevant training and networking events.The platform combines exclusive content created by Crafty Counsel’s in-house video team working with selected law firms, with high end videos created by firms themselves.