Hi guys,
I’ve noticed there have been a lot of sharing between the members on helpful commercial awareness resources. But it took me a long time to find out about them – I had to access thread titles that seems relevant and scroll through all the comments. I thought other people may also face similar problem so I collated a list of resources here, detailing the pros and cons (based on my personal experience and what I’ve gathered from TCLA members’ discussion) so you can make an informed choice of which source to go for. As some people have already advised, trying to read all of these can be extremely overwhelming!
Email subscriptions:
· Finimize (my personal favourite!)
o
Pros: FREE daily emails (except for Sunday) of prominent financial/business deals and events, short yet fairly insightful read (3-4 minutes), serve as perfect starting point for further research. Finimize glossary page also gives simple, easy-to-understand definition of financial/business jargons -
https://www.finimize.com/wp/glossary/
o
Cons: quite short, requires further research to really understand all the issues
· Bright Network Commercial Awareness Updates:
o
Pros: FREE, thorough and comprehensive summaries of key financial/business events (about 3-4 stories each update), weekly publication so focuses on macro events/deals that has wide industrial/market impact à Finimize is better if you wish to keep up-to-date with micro business events, suggest questions you should ask yourself at the end of each summary which you can try to answer to test how well you understand the issues
o
Cons: relatively short, you have to create an account with Bright Network, check your spam inbox as sometimes the updates just go there
· Lexology:
o
Pros: FREE, collection of law firm’s published insights of new case law and legislative developments, you can select the sectors and practice areas you prefer to receive updates on
o
Cons: often discuss very technical legislative/ procedural issues so you have to do extra research on the background in order to understand the materials thoroughly
News outlet:
· BBC, The Guardian, Business Insider
o
Pros: convenient everyday go-to for news updates, easy-to-understand, some people find it useful to read these sources for background then move onto The FT for more technical stuffs
o
Cons: broadcast general news, state and explain the facts more than providing analysis, should use in combination of The FT and/ or the Economist
· The Economist:
o
Pros: my all-time favourite magazine, weekly cover of all prominent political, social and economics events, easy-to-understand, very insightful, articles are categorised by world regions so you can select which to focus on, their special reports are amazing as they usually cover prominent industrial trends that gives you well-rounded information on the covered topics, gives a lot of opinions but be careful as you may very well treat them as facts! (I always have to remind myself to be critical when reading The Economist)
o
Cons: Paid subscription required, otherwise you can only access up to 3 articles every week, but I think the £12 for 12 weeks deal first-time subscription for students are quite good. After that it’s £53 every 3 months (I think it‘s really worth the money!)
· The FT:
o
Pros: daily coverage of all important financial and business news (it’s in the name isn’t it), contains insightful expert analysis and opinions, seriously the best resources that everyone should familiarise to in order to bolster commercial awareness. I've gatehred that some TCLA members have found the FT Due Diligence Newsletter quite helpful but they are limitted to Premium Subscription
o
Cons: very technical, can be hard to understand initially but it’ll get better once you grow more accustomed to it. Best advice I can give is to pick and force yourself to read 3-4 FT articles everyday and use BBC for background info, and increase the number of articles as it starts to make better sense to you!
· The Principle:
o
Pros: catered-to-student legal updates so very easy to understand
o
Cons: focus specifically on legal rather than business news, published monthly so not a go-to for frequent updates, you have to subscribe to Allaboutlaw.com as they are the publisher of this newspaper
· Forbes magazine:
o
Pros: I love Forbes magazines because they feature articles and discussions on trendy commercial, technology and social issues, but from rather original perspectives. Not only good to bolster commercial awareness but your general knowledge too!
o
Cons: provides analysis rather than news coverage, discuss interesting but sometimes irrelevant topics to your commercial awareness interests
Websites
· Law Gazette, The Lawyer, Lawyer2b, Legal Week
o
Pros: all good resources for updates on newest legal developments and law firms’ news
o
Cons: the level of technicalities of these sources (with the exception of Lawyer2b) sometimes make me feel like they are more useful for qualified lawyers and partner levels rather than law students wishing to become trainees; The Lawyer require very expensive subscription lawyer2b is free and but updates are too infrequent in my opinion.
· For Legal tech: Legal Geek and Legaltech
o
Pros: keep you updated on all latest legal tech trends
o
Cons: can be quite difficult to understand especially when you do not have a tech background
Books:
· All You Need to Know About Commercial Awareness by Christopher Stoakes: very thorough, comprehensive introduction, the author puts commercial awareness into perspectives, which really helps me to start thinking about how this skill comes in to help solicitors add values to their client works. I recommend this book over Christopher’s first edition
All You Need to Know About the City which to me is more of a technical guide to the Finance and Banking practice area.
I hope this help! And please feel free to add to the list guys! I’ll appreciate sharing of helpful podcasts (this is the one source I have yet tried out, would be helpful to play it while cooking or bathing)
