Monday 22February 2010
Guest writer Phyllis McMahon

Such a very busy week we have in front of us. Our new Training centre is booked all this week and Legal-Island are presenting their breakfast seminar "Compensation & Benefits: Recession & Beyond" on Tuesday 23rd. Gerorge Alexander shall be presenting this seminar.

Education Law Update our full day seminar is being held in Stillorgan Park Hotel Dublin on 25th. This Seminar is fully booked. Jayne, Heather and Vanessa shall all be hosting at this event.
Heather shall also be attending the Women in Business lunch which is being held on Wednesday. She also hopes to meet up with Parity for a short meeting when she returns to Belfast on Thursday.

Kerry, as well as hosting the breakfast seminar shall be attending a Masterclass on Coaching & Mentoring on Thursday morning in Belfast.

Scott is very busy this week meeting Killian O'Rourke from Partner O'Rourke Reid, Marion Courtney from Corporate Services Manager - Chambers Ireland. Deirdre Mulligan - partner - McCann Fitzgerald. Aisling Butler & Catherine O'Flynn solicitors from William Fry and Marian Jennings, Lecturer from Dublin Institute of Technology. All these meetings are taking place in Dublin.

Barry shall also be in Dublin on Wednesday and Thursday this week having meeting and networking.

No time to dally!!!

Monday 15th February - Guest Writer Arnold

This week we would like to welcome two new persons in legal-island Peter Fitzpatrick is appointed to Marketing Officer and Ainsley Hirst is appointed to Senior Marketing Executive. Welcome Peter and Ainsley!!

It is another busy week for us.

There are three bookings in our training centre including Breakfast Seminar on Wednesday. The topic this week is Nutrition at Work.

Heather is in Parity tomorrow and she is attending the Breakfast Seminar on Wednesday.

Radek is working on new remote access tools and security policy for teleworkers.

Jayne is in the office - all week – doing a couple of show arounds of the training centre.

Kerry is on a B4B Networking event on Thursday lunchtime and a meeting with Allen Baird on Thursday evening.

This week our marketing team Pamela, Michelle and Peter will be meeting up with fellow marketers from local Antrim and Ballymena organisations to swap and discuss marketing ideas. The meeting will take place on Tuesday and representatives from Diamond Recruitment and Sam Mouldings will be attending.

On Thursday Pamela will meet Kris from Kris Byers Design to discuss new ideas for the design of Legal-Island marketing materials.

Wednesday Barry is meeting Carol Fitzsimons of Young Enterprise Northern Ireland and also Linus Murray of O'Reilly Stewart Solicitors for lunch.

On Thursday Barry is meeting Niahm Shiels and Trudy Arthurs from the Association of Coaching on Thursday and Allen Barid, Trainer Thursday evening.

Another busy week ahead!!!

Monday 8th February 2010 - Guest Writer Jacqui

With the change in the weather, there is an air of optimism buzzing around Legal-Island, last week saw an increase in our bookings, especially for the Education Law update which takes place in Dublin on the 25th February proving to very popular.

There was an early start for some of our staff members on Tuesday last, when we had a Breakfast seminar in our training centre. The topic was on Coaching Skills for Management & HR and it went very well.

Meetings and Events this week:

Tuesday is another early start, with the second of our Breakfast seminars taking place at 8am on Mindmapping. After that the majority of staff will be attending in-house training on Eventspro.

Barry is meeting with Marie Anderson, Ombudsman for NI in Belfast Tomorrow and then heading off to London on Thursday.

Jayne Finlay will be attending a National Training Awards training course on Tuesday. And on Friday will be hosting an open day at Island House training centre for businesses within the Antrim Town area.

Kerry is meeting up with Colin Coffey of Global Vetting and Pamela Kirkpatrick who we hope will be presenting at some of our future breakfast seminars.

Scott is meeting senior management at Robinson Services on Wednesday to discuss a possible coaching arrangement and will be meeting Lorraine Toolan from the EEF on Thursday to finalise exercises for the ‘Discipline and Underperformance at Work’ event they will be facilitating together on 11 March.

As you can see, no time to waste at Legal-Island!!

Monday 1st February 2010 - Guest Speaker Jayne Finlay

Another busy week is planned at Legal-Island

This week the team are in full networking mode with Barry Phillips starting off the week with meetings with Keith Pryde from Diskshred, Willa Mawhinney Charles Garavan from the Memory Academy and George Wilson from the Centre for Competitiveness about EFQM. Jayne Finlay will also be joining him for the EFQM meeting.

Jayne, Heather and Kerry are all attending the Speed Networking event tomorrow evening at the Holiday Inn with the aim of promoting our 2010 employment law events as well as advertising the benefits of our new training centre in Antrim.

Scott Alexander will be in Dublin this week. He is networking with Niamh O’Hanlon from Ladbroke (Irl) Ltd; Deirdre Lynch from MOP solicitors; Carol Fawcett from Hayes solicitors; Aoife Bradley from LK Shields solicitors; and Karen O’Connor from Datapac Consumables. Most of the meetings are about email and event developments.


Kerry heads up the first of our Northern Ireland Breakfast Seminars entitled "Coaching Skills for Management & HR" in our new training centre for Northern Ireland.

Marketing are in full swing this promoting a number of our key employment law seminars in Northern Ireland including Redundancy Selection seminar and Essentials of Employment Law not to mention the our big event planned for March The Northern Ireland HR Conference

Here’s to a productive week at the Island!

Monday 25th January 2010 - Guest Writer Heather

Well for all in Legal-Island this week is the calm before the storm, the storm being our conference season! We start next week with a bang - our new programme of Northern Irealnd breakfast seminars the first of which will improve managers coaching skills.

Today Kerry and Arnold head off to Belfast today for their fire marshall training to improve the services we provide in our brand new training centre in Antrim.

Kerry will then also be joining Scott on Wednesday to meet Jacqui Reid from Camden.

Barry is looking to the end of the week for his lunch with Maureen Totton from Robinson Cleaners and James Carey from Clonlee Nursing Home

As for myself, I will be travelling down to Dublin on Thursday for an event in the Burlington Hotel and will work my way back up to the North on Friday, visiting numerous possible venues on the way!

Here's to another great week at Legal-Island.

Monday 18 January 2010 - Guest Writer Julie

It's a busy week ahead with lots of networking taking place in Legal Island.

Barry starts off on Tuesday morning with a meeting in Dublin with Charles Garavan of the Memory Academy in Dublin. On wednesday he meets with Gill Fairley from Jenkinsonconsulting and Keith from Diskshred.co.uk. Peter McBride from Carecall wraps up Barrys networking for the week on Thursday.

Kerry is working hard on the preparation for the new Legal Island breakfast seminars and both her and Pamela will be meeting Liam, the editor at the Antrim Guardian later this week regards the breakfast seminars. Kerry has a meeting with Dave McClements from McClements Business Consultants on Wednesday.

The monthly Antrim HR Forum takes place on Tuesday 19th January hosted by Scott Alexander. Scott has a meeting with 'Business in the Community' about a healthy workplace event & Joe Blair from MBS about a customer care programme on wednesday.
Scott wraps up his networking on thursday meeting John Conaghan of Carecall about their successful pilot to help long term absentees return to work. In the evening he will attend a 'Burns Supper' hosted by McGrigors Solicitors at Belfast Castle.

Onwards!

Guest Writer- Donna

Two words sum up January in Legal Island - not "icy roads" (although very appropriate) or "January Blues" but "Performance Reviews". Yes it is that time of the year again when we are all assessed on our skills, get our backs patted (hopefully) and set new objectives Training has been given to all our managers on how to carry out an effective performance review - the key word will be SMART as will be our 2010 objectives.

Aside from performance reviews some Legal Island folks will be meeting and greeting.

Kerry will be getting back into the swing of things as Conference Manager NI by scouting for new hotels and venues for our upcoming events.

Heather, in her new role as Conference Manager ROI will be meeting Kerry Curran from NITB on Wednesday.

Donna has a meeting with William McDowell of Fire Safety and Compliance NI to assess our fire safety requirements for the office and the new training facilities.

Scott will be meeting with Rosemary Connelly of the same named solicitors and Michael Black from Cleaver Fulton Rankin on Friday.

Barry met with Adrian Gundy from the Centre for Competitiveness and was notably impressed. On Tuesday he will be meeting reps from Laptopforlearnings about an electronic whiteboard for our training centre - which will make it an even better choice of venue for training events.On Thursday he is meeting with George Alexander of Alexander HR for lunch .

Another busy year ahead for 2010, heres hoping our performance reviews will set us up for the months ahead.