Modern Development: Strategies for Creating Effective Training Programs for Today’s Law Firm
With modern priorities perpetually evolving, law firm professional development is likewise transforming. To remain effective, development strategies must adapt to modern employees’ needs.
“Employees are accessing information and learning differently than they did just a few years ago,” according to Bersin by Deloitte’s infographic: Meet the Modern Learner. “Most are looking for answers outside of traditional training and development channels.”
The legal industry is no stranger to this trend.
“A lot of times there is an inclination to execute the same development programs because they’ve been done before, but I don’t think that’s the best thing to do,” says Ori Portnoy, Director of Legal Talent at Blank Rome LLP. “You have to listen to attorney demands and understand what the people who are here right now need at the levels they are at now. And that might not be the same next year for the people at the same levels.”
Firms are always striving to make training and development more effective and personalized. Below are eight strategies firms might consider to create more engaging development programs for today’s legal needs.
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6. INCORPORATE ACTIVE TRAINING
Hands-on training can take on many forms, but firms should always aim to customize it specifically for the participating attorneys’ specific skill sets and needs.
For example, Blank Rome offers a Trial Academy Program, which aims to provide senior associates and some counsel and junior partners with trial skills. The attorneys are placed on teams and receive coaching from the firm’s seasoned trial lawyers. The teams then engage in a series of mock trials in Philadelphia courtrooms, with former judges presiding and witnesses and juries made up of lawyers from the firm. At the conclusion of the trial, the participants review video footage with their coaches and also receive feedback from the judges, jury members and coaches.
“We specifically focus this program at that stage of the lawyers’ development because our goal is for them to utilize this and bring it into the client work that they do,” says Portnoy.
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"Modern Development: Strategies for Creating Effective Training Programs for Today’s Law Firm," by Mary Kate Sheridan was published in the April 2018 edition of Legal Management, the magazine of the Association of Legal Administrators.