Induction day plans

23 October 2014, 2 pm

A group of us are plotting to make the student induction day more entertaining.  Last time we noticed that an afternoon nap had slipped onto the agenda following the buffet lunch.  This nap just happened to coincide with my talk on communication skills.  I used to think it was a good talk, until the time someone put in their feedback comments that they “found it difficult to understand”.  This, combined with its obviously soporific qualities, has led me to conclude that the talk must go. 

We are going to replace it with a game of extreme musical chairs and one of pin-the-tail-on-the-charter (pin-the-tail-on-The-Queen was voted out).  Then we are going to split people into smaller groups, so that they cannot hide even if they want to have an afternoon nap, and talk to them VERY LOUDLY about what CIPA and ITMA can do for them.  We have not yet decided which parts of the membership package to discuss, but free beer is sure to feature.

I think all trainees should go to the induction day.  It may be the most exciting IP-related thing that happens to them all year.  Apart from the Informals cocktail parties and pub crawls, obviously, which I notice have been springing up all over the place since our meeting on the pavements of Chancery Lane.  Clearly we pledged them way too much financial support.

But at Informals parties they do not have lectures on professional ethics and client care and complaints handling; or on how to make a profit in this impoverished, cut-throat profession of ours; or on IP being a business tool instead of just something for barristers to write text books about.  So they will not know what to do when their client asks them to patent his competitor’s trade mark on the quiet or complains that they have been insufficiently affectionate, as evidenced by the size of their latest invoice.  And they may not remember to ask him how stealing his competitors’ trade marks fits into his business plan, exactly.

More to the point, I bet they don’t play pin-the-tail-on-the-charter at Informals events.  That alone should be enough to bring students flooding in to CIPA Hall on the 1^st and the 8^th of December.