Being knowledgeable about technology and programs that clients rely on lawyers to use daily is extremely important, but providing the training necessary to gain that knowledge can be somewhat difficult. The goal is to make sure that every lawyer has the adequate knowledge to fully serve their clients, but you don’t want to bore those who already know all the relevant information. Additionally, you want to be able to prove to your clients that their lawyers know what they’re doing. The firm Keesal, Young, and Logan have devised a training program that accomplishes both tasks. After realizing that information technology is important to client satisfaction, the director of information for the firm, Justin Hectus, decided to implement the Legal Technology Assessment.
The Legal Technology Assessment , or LTA for short, is a tech competency test developed by D. Casey Flaherty while working at Kia Motors. By implementing the test, lawyers could test out and bypass certain areas of instruction. Additionally, because the assessment highlighted the areas in which each individual required further education, individuals were able to complete their training in a third of the time. An associate at Keesal, Young, and Logan, Sean Cooney, explains that, “group training is often inefficient because everyone has a different familiarity with whatever program is being used. The individualized training allowed us to skip anything that is redundant.”
The LTA not only identified weak areas for Keesal, Young, and Logan but also measured how effective their tailored program was. After the training program was completed, the average LTA score was improved by almost 40%, which Keesal, Young, and Logan can now use to tout their personnel’s tech competency. Additionally, combining the LTA and specialized training resulted in the trainees implementing what they learned into their work. For example, another associate, Erin Weesner-McKinley, relates that, “some tasks that I previously delegated can now be done with the click of a button, and I have a better understanding of other tasks which I still choose to delegate to nonbillable personnel or colleagues with lower billing rates.”
Article via Legaltech News, November 25, 2015
Photo: Computers via Duane Storey [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]