Legal secretaries across several offices were recognized by the firm’s COO and Chairman for completing their LTC4 certification in Legal Documents and sevearl other program modules.

A coveted progressional credential, LTC4 certification enables the firm firms to demonstrate its ability to handle work in the most cost effective and efficient way possible. Beyond efficiency gains, this offers an effective competitive message in RFP scenarios.

Butler Snow has adopted six LTC4 modules, working with Wilson Allen to provide all the relevant courseware needed to meet the evaluation requirements for these plans. These include:

• Legal Documents (Word)
• Managing Documents and E-mails (iManage)
• Collaborating with Others: E-Mailing and Sharing Documents (iManage, Word, Outlook, ShareFile, Scrub, and Nuance)
• Data, Reports and Exhibits (Excel)
• Presentations (PowerPoint)
• Working with Clients (InterAction)

“All of our efforts to improve skills help us to provide even more value to our clients” – Downs Rachlin IT Director

Downs Rachlin was aware that attorney technology skills had become a hot topic with their clients and throughout the legal community. The firm recognized the need to show the its commitment to innovation through the use of technology.

With the support of the Managing Partner and Practice Group representatives, the firm introduced its “Step it up” program and engaged Wilson Allen to provide training tools which would allow the its staff and lawyers to access the training, tutorials and KnowledgeChecks which would lead them to the required skill levels.

The firm decided to introduce 2 levels of competence – Level 1 being competencies which were common to all users and Level 2 those which were aligned to jobs and roles. Using monthly incentives the firm saw a very high level of participation – 100% of staff and paralegal and 80% of associates have now completed Level 1. The firm also uses the program for new hire training ensuring that all new staff are well prepared before they join. Future plans include the introduction of Wilson Allen’s Learning in Action tool (“LiA”). This measures multiple methods of accomplishing tasks in the firm’s own live applications and also working towards LTC4 Certification.

Fladgate introduced LTC4 up-skilling and certification using the Wilson Allen courseware and skills evaluation tool. They wanted a workflow-based learning program that focused on the day-to-day work of lawyers and staff.  They also needed a long-term solution to ensure that they could build on initial successes.

They appreciated that LTC4 required skills could be taught, and proficiency measured, via Wilson Allen courseware and evaluations tools. The Wilson Goal-Based Approach ties training to business and user goals and delivers training modules that are process-driven rather than application driven.  This approach was perceived as very flexible solution, allowing lawyers to learn when and where they wanted to do so, rather than via fixed classroom sessions.

Michael Wells, the senior trainer at Fladgate estimates that over 90% of the firm are now certified in Working with Legal Documents.

Fladgate reports strong results, including:

• More interest from users in IT training and the benefits of learning to streamline their workflows
• More interest in self-learning — using e-learning content as just-in-time learning rather than ringing the helpdesk
• Lawyers have become more self-sufficient when creating documents, causing a reduction in basic revision requests — this allows secretaries and others to focus on major document production
• A measurable difference in improved efficiency in document creation and editing and the substantial reduction in “how do I?” Help Desk calls

“Contrary to expectation, tutorials and assessments are undertaken at all times of the day and night. People are really using the flexibility to train when it suits them.” — Michael Wells, Senior Trainer

Tanya Vawter, Training Manager at Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, LLP, along with her training team of 3 people, have created a continuous performance improvement initiative that provides top-notch online training to attorneys and staff in their 35 plus offices spread across the US. They also provide that same level of training to the 4 -10 new hires that arrived each week. They are members of LTC4 and are using the Wilson Allen LMS and LTC4-aligned courseware. The LTC4 certification program has been launched to all offices with the intention of fostering ongoing up-skilling.

“The response has been very positive. Our users like the immediacy of the CBT courses. They also like that they are earning certification which is attached to the individual rather than the firm. We’ve had around 300 LTC4 certifications earned over the past year. We’d like this to be higher next year, so we are always looking into new ways to motivate employees.” – Tanya Vawter

Here are the stats showing their considerable achievements:

• 59 LTC4 Legal Professional Certifications have been earned by Attorneys.
• 229 LTC4 Legal Support Specialist Certifications have been earned by Staff Members.
• 1557 Ongoing Monthly Learning Plans have been completed by Attorneys and Staff Members over the past year
• 32,482 Computer Based Training (CBT) courses were completed on the Wilson Allen LMS within the past 12 months.

McKenzie Lake Lawyers was the first Law Firm in Canada to have their training program recognized with LTC4 Certification.

The Firm has always been committed to continuing education for its members says Laurie Hause, CIO, but the depth and breadth of continuous learning and up-skilling opportunities were limited without a full featured Learning Management System.

By launching a learning mangaement program featuring LTC4 e-learning plans, the firm enables all lawyers and staff can develop the core technology skills and certification needed to execute matters dependably, efficiently and professionally for their clients.

“We are always looking for ways to create an advantage for our clients, to better serve our clients – it’s in our nature.” — John McNair, Managing Partner.

As part of the firm’s ongoing commitment to professional development, Reinhart embarked on a training program to certify the technical skills of its associates and administrative assistants. The goal of the program was for people to gain a better understanding of overall workflow processes and to be more productive in the use of several software solutions including iManage, Microsoft Office, and associated legal applications.

To meet this need, Reinhart selected the turnkey SkillUp! certification program from Wilson Allen. It maps on-demand content and evaluation tools to the LTC4 core competency learning plans, enabling attorneys and staff to become LTC4 certified.

Said Mary Fredrich, IT Training Coordinator: “[Wilson Allen] was very engaging and took the time to learn about our needs and walk us through the training process. The fact that the program is approved by LTC4… solidified our decision. It was an easy program to implement to deliver the targeted training our people needed. It also gave us a baseline for each person to build knowledge as we offer more training.”

Reinhart made use of the many online courses in the Wilson SkillUp! program, using KnowledgeCheck to evaluate skills. “We uploaded all of the courseware into our learning management system (LMS), which allowed us to track completion and submit results to LTC4 for certification,” Fredrich says. “Having this information in our LMS also allowed us to track progress for skills reviews and ongoing training.”

Robinson Bradshaw wanted to implement a firmwide training program that would have a meaningful impact ‎on firm’s morale and productivity. Having learned of the LTC4 certification framework, firm Training Coordinator Greg Tomlinson was excited about its potential to meet these needs.

“LTC4 initially came to my attention through our in-house trainer in the fall of 2014.  My immediate reaction was that maybe this would finally be a solution to the incredible need in law firms for better skills to support law firm efficiency, both at the lawyer and staff levels.  They sold me because they were focusing on workflow processes (not just software knowledge) and creating an environment of continuing skills development. We believed the staff and attorneys would take a fresh look at the new training tools with the ability to learn at their desk or at home on their own schedule.

Staff acceptance of the training, assessments and certifications have exceeded our expectations and, based on that success, we are hoping to incorporate the attorney groups in the near future.” — Pam Sachs, Director of Human Resources.

Greg Tomlinson led the charge to integrate LTC4 resources from Wilson Allen into the firm’s existing LMS infrastructure. With help from Wilson, he broke out each LTC4 core competency skill, and created learning plans in the LMS of the videos and assessments for easy viewing and tracking.

Learning plans adopted by Robinson Bradshaw include: Managing Documents and Emails, Working with Legal Documents and Security for Lawyers, and Collaborating with Others.

“FWIW, personally I actually rather enjoyed this. I thought the content was well presented. And I have used several of the tricks I learned.” — Lawyer comment

Schwabe wished to implement a firm-wide training program for attorneys and staff focused on competency ‎based performance standards, evaluation and ongoing training that would have a meaningful impact ‎on firm morale, productivity and profitability. The program offered the opportunity to become ‎‎LTC4 certified in various workflow based core competencies which were relevant to how users work.

They knew that an attorney up-skilling program based on LTC4 would provide them with an industry standard of legal IT core competencies. The firm identified multiple objectives, including:

• Attorney and Staff Performance: Enabling stakeholders to improve skills, gain efficiency in all tasks, and to measure baseline skills and continuous performance improvement using industry standards.
• Staff Ratios: Better skills and greater efficiency result in higher productivity, therefore improving our attorney to staff ratio, resulting in reduced overhead.
• IT Department Client Service: We achieved a reduction in Help Desk Calls which meant that Help Desk staff could serve clients more proactively.
• ROI: We produced Efficiency Dashboard reports with calculated ROI which were provided to the Board on a predetermined schedule.

Goals achieved

• Improved skills,  efficiency, and productivity
• Improved quality of work product
• Provided objective measurements for performance evaluation
• Reduced calls to the Help Desk
• Improved staff ratios and increased attorney satisfaction with staff
• Improved employee satisfaction and retention

Seddons’ lawyers and staff have been certified in both Security and Managing Documents and E-Mail by LTC4, the industry-recognized standard for legal technology competence. Lawyers and staff were provided with e-learning to educate themselves in the applications, followed by an online certification session with a trainer there to help and support them. The program was immensely successful – everybody passed the certification.

“Our goal was to ensure efficiency across the business,” says James Temple, Chief Operating Officer. “We want to provide clients with the best service possible, ensuring we get maximum value from the solutions in which we have invested, while also helping the firm minimise expenses. LTC4 provides us with a framework that enables us to achieve those goals.”

Seddons chose LTC4 as the standard for competency and certification.  For the security course, the entire firm took part in the Sentinel Security Awareness program from Wilson Allen.  For To bring themselves up to speed in the Managing Documents and E-Mail core competencies, Seddons used Skill-Up! elearning from Wilson Allen, plus custom e-learning created by the firm. The firm used Learning in Action (LiA) from Wilson Allen as the evaluation tool, and results were stored in the Wilson Allen LMS.  The whole process, including creating the e-learning for the firm’s document and practice management system (Proclaim), took approximately 4 months.

Future plans include the Working with Legal Documents learning plan, and a repeat of the Security plan every 6 to 12 months, plus the Time and Billing learning plan at a later date.

The Steptoe/Wilson Allen Training Team rolled out Work 10, Office 365, and Nuance to 600 users in 14 offices across 6 states. The team identified key business and user goals, validated project objectives, and formulated a training timeline. Wilson created a comprehensive training plan with office-by-office resource allocations, project activities with owners, and risks. Wilson then managed the overall training plan.

The rollout goals were:

• Increase usage of the document management system over storing documents in email
• Manage documents and email more efficiently and intuitively
• Allow users to work remotely on any device
• Enable users to do more from inside the familiar Office and Outlook interfaces

“We worked with Wilson Allen to help move our firm to the iManage cloud platform. We found Wilson to be very attentive to our training needs, flexible in their approach, and very knowledgeable of the subject.”    — Mark Combs, Chief Information Officer.

Global law firm Squire Patton Boggs undertook a firm-wide project to migrate their US offices from eDocs DM 5 to iManage  with Universal Search, and upgrade the other offices which already used iManage. With over 1,000 lawyers and staff in 44 offices located in 21 countries, the firm took advantage of this upgrade to improve user proficient in the new software and instill document management best practices.

Squire used a virtual training classroom, conducted using a WebEx environment with break-out labs, so that individuals could undertake hands-on practice assignments.

This training format provided a number of distinct advantages for the firm:

• Preparatory on-line learning to bring users up to speed before the virtual sessions
• Hands-on practice during training for all users in offices large and small
• A smaller group of trainers meant for more standardized training
• Reduced training set-up demands on local IT resources
• Better data gathering and reporting on training sessions
• Reduced travel expenses

Outcome and Measurement

The training also incorporated the LTC4 (Legal Technology Core Competencies Certification Coalition) to drive internal productivity and to promote their commitment to technology proficiency to potential clients. The firm certified their users, including 250 lawyers, in the Managing Documents and Emails workflow.