The Movement for Attorneys

Lee Ann Enquist, VP of Professional Development for Thomson Reuters authored an article entitled The Online Learning Movement for Attorneys. In the article she discussed the increasing migration toward online learning in the legal profession.

According to the article, the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) reported that in the year 2007 nearly one-third of all learning hours across all industries were technology-based. With American businesses spending upwards of $134 billion on learning and professional development, this is no small impact on their bottom lines.

The legal profession has been a little slower to adapt to the technology training trend, but that is changing. Law firms are realizing the value, in terms of time and money, which training through technology can provide. But training for lawyers is not always handled the same way that it is for other professions.

Lawyers see time as their most valuable resource and must balance their training hours with their billable hours. So online learning just makes sense. But for it to be effective, the learning must be both efficient and effective. That is why training developers must understand the goals that lawyers are trying to achieve and find ways to help them accomplish them.

For instance, the choice of training methods for most industries is visual (movies, pictures, etc.). But the legal profession seems to prefer more audio training. That movement could be the result of their general aptitude for the material being covered, a desire to fully maximize available time (allowing them to listen to podcasts when and where time allows), or their even their need to maximize their billable hours.

Visit to NCFI

Today my office visited the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI) in Hoover, Alabama. Although the NCFI is not an e-learning institute, it does focus on providing training to law enforcement officials throughout the United States in the areas of computer forensics and digital handling techniques.

The NCFI, a joint endeavour between the United States Secret Service and the State of Alabama, was established in 2007. The facility, provided by the State of Alabama, has five high-tech classrooms, an amazing “wired” mock courtroom, a computer forensic lab, and other meeting and training areas. Using the NCFI, the United States Secret Service provides cyber crime and computer forensic training for state and local law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges from across the country.

Because of the high-tech environment in which criminal activity is taking place, law enforcement is facing unprecedented challenges, especially in the areas of computer-based crimes (i.e., child pornography, identity theft, etc.), crimes where computers are used in the planning or execution phases (i.e., making bombs, recording the proceeds of a crime, etc.), and use of the Internet to threaten our banking, financial and critical infrastructures. The NCFI addresses these challenges by providing training on cyber-investigative techniques and by sharing current expertise.

Since its inception, the NCFI has trained over 1,000 law enforcement personnel from all 50 states, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico. This is a top-notched organization, in a world-class facility, located right here in Alabama.

Top Ten iPad Apps for Lawyers

The Apple iPad has been making significant inroads in the legal community since it's release. Wes Billingsley has compiled a list of 10 iPad Apps that he says are essential for making the iPad more than just a fancy gadget.

1. Evernote - Cost: free. Allows users to save notes and ideas, attach files and pictures, or record voice memos and share them across all devices.

2. Dragon Dictation - Cost: free. Dragon Dictation allows users to dictate memos on their iPad and share them with support staff in the office.

3. GoToMeeting - Cost: free. An iPad version of the popular online meeting software.

4. Citrix Receiver - Cost: free. Provides secure-access to legal applications, virtual desktops and data.

5. iAnnotate PDF - Cost: $9.99. Allows users to review, mark-up, annotate, redact, and add signatures to PDF documents. Then the documents can be saved and shared with others.

6. Dropbox - Cost: free. A cloud application that allows users to store and share up to 2GB of files. Dropbox synchronizes across multiple computers and multiple users. This version is capable of rendering Microsoft Office and PDF files.

7. Fastcase and WestlawNext - Cost: free. Customized iPad appls allow subscribers to LexisNexis and Westlaw to directly access their content.

8. Feeddler RSS Reader - Cost: free. Described as the best RSS reader for the iPad. Feeddler has an easy-to-follow interface for keeping up with information from all kinds of sources.

9. iWork for iPad - Cost: $9.99 to 29.98. A full-featured office application includes a word processor (Pages), spreadsheet application (Numbers), and presentation software (Keynote). These apps allow you to create sophisticated files right on your iPad.

10. Infinote - Cost: free. A notetaking, task-managing, and brainstorming application that takes full advantage of iPad's touch screen.

Next Generation Users

The third group discussed by the authors in "Next Generation Learning in Law Firms" is what they describe as the "next generation user." They estimate that by the year 2020, employees of law firms will be technology users, reflecting the behaviors, values, needs, expectations, and demands of the different generations they belong to. By many estimates, there could be five different generations in the workforce at that time.

It is through this incredible convergence of generations that the need for tailored, consultative learning programs will emerge. In fact, the so-called Millennials are already impacting the profession in a major way. Tom Gimbel wrote in "Managing Millennials" (2007) that approximately 70 percent of partners in today's law firms are Baby Boomers, and they will lose nearly 75 percent of those partnerships in the short-term. They will be be replaced by the Millennials, a generation noted for:

• Their rapid adoption of technology
• A general disregard for IT policy and standardization
• A strong desire for a personal experience
• A collaborative and relationship-based work environment
• An openness in mentoring and professional/personal development

So, what does this mean for the law firm? How will these new demands impact the availability of technology in the law firm? What, exactly, will Next Generation Learning look like?

The authors believe we will see a whole new approach to formal learning. And, perhaps, we will see that informal learning will take the lead with respect to learning the new technologies and teaching the new user generations joining the profession in the coming years.

Next Generation Law Firms

Continuing my review of "Next Generation Learning in Law Firms," I will discuss the author's view of the next generation law firm. They state that the business model for law firms is undergoing rapid change and cite predictions that a new "normal" will emerge as soon as 2020. This new normal will have law firms employing standard project management practices and technologies in an effort to control costs and more effectively use resources. In their estimation, fixed fees and other ways of pricing legal services will replace the more traditional billable hours and alternative fee arrangements.

In addition, the authors explain that global thought leaders are predicting a change in the way law firms do business. They see specialization and business roles emerging as replacements for what many see as traditional roles in the firms. This change will be facilitated by the availability of automation and standardized processes and workflows. It is the technology and new skills that will permit this change to take place.

However, the authors actually posed more questions than they had answers for. For instance, they wonder if legal secretaries will become more project-focused, or team-focused? Exactly what are these new technologies and skill that will be needed? How will business specialist roles fit in the legal office construct? In what ways will technology and workflows need to be adjusted to fit into the law firms' specialty area? And finally, how can technology education and educators provide value and relevance in this new model?

As you can tell, the landscape of the law firm of the future is rapidly changing, just as it is in nearly every aspect of business today. And these changes are requiring significant shifts in the traditional paradigms of how business is conducted. How will this shake out? The authors are not quite certain. Suffice it to say that the law firm of 2020 will barely resemble the firm of 2000.

Driving forces behind next gen learning

I read an interesting article recently by Brie Stampe and Tami Schiller of TravellingCoaches.com. In this article they talk about next generation learning in legal offices.

Among the highlights of this article was their identification of the driving forces affecting next generation learning, especially in the legal community. The authors specifically identified three such forces: technologies, law firms, and users. In this post I will discuss the technologies that they wrote about.

Next Generation Technologies

Innovation in learning models will be driven by the new kinds of technical competencies that will be essential for legal staff and lawyers. The authors see consolidation and commoditization of legal-specific software as more and more applications move to the cloud and the number of third-party applications in use increases.

As a result, less time will be needed in formal training on custom desktop applications, but there will be an increase in the training needed on workflow, business processes and leveraging technology for the practice of law.

It is also likely that less technical, consumer-oriented devices, i.e. smartphones, iPads, etc., will replace the current technologies that we find in the workplace. So training will have to be developed to support these non-standard tools.

Another technology that will find an expanded role in the legal office is the knowledge management system. The authors see the increased roles of these systems as providing opportunities for entirely new forms of learning due to the increased access to information.

In my next post I will discuss Next Generation Law Firms.

Click here to read the entire article.

Welcome to my blog

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog. Here I will be providing information about how e-learning is/can be used by legal offices. My discussions will be prompted by the reading I am doing as part of my Interactive Technology degree at the University of Alabama. However, I will also be adding personal insight based upon my experiences working in the Legal Information Services portion of the Air Force JAG Corps.

I encourage visitors to comment, ask questions, or provide suggestions.