Your law firm training program needs a shot of adrenaline. But you can’t clone your trainer (or yourself). How can you extend the reach and impact of training across every office and department in your law firm in an affordable and efficient way?
The solution is far easier than you might imagine! These 10 proven steps have helped many law firms launch and maintain impactful training programs, assuring that their employees are productive today and well into the future.
1. Set up a cloud-based learning management system (LMS)
This first step is essentially the clone you so desperately need. With a cloud-based LMS, one trainer becomes a training team. Using an LMS, a single trainer can assess, assign, track and report on each individual learner across your firm.
Like a game of dominos, once you launch this piece of your program, the rest of the pieces fall neatly into place. Read on for specifics!
2. Load the LMS with training content
You have the LMS, now you need the training content. You should be able to subscribe relatively cheaply to a content provider who updates your content regularly. (Make sure that provider lets you keep the content if you un-subscribe. That content should be yours forever.) Additionally, you can load your own content into your new LMS, and you can link out to other tutorials and videos you’ve found helpful on the internet. Relevant content is key to a successful law firm training program.
In a nutshell: if you use it to train, you can house it in the LMS.
3. Create learning paths specific to the audiences you are training
If there is an area of training that feels like Groundhog Day, turn it into a learning path! For example, create a “new hire training” path and load it with HR paperwork, required compliance videos, trainings on your document management system, tutorials on firm protocols and more.
4. Enroll people into courses / learning paths
You created learning paths, now enroll people into them. Simply click a few buttons and the LMS does the rest, “feeding” training content to each individual in a lock-step formation. Now, instead of training each new hire separately or traveling to various offices to train different departments, you have extended your reach and impact, AND you have freed up time for more visionary needs, such as working with the IT department to help the firm adopt new technologies.
5. Make your LMS dashboard enticing and interesting
OK, you’ve got the LMS, the training content and the learning paths. Now you need to make the LMS dashboard an interesting place to visit so that people participate in your law firm training program! With a robust, cloud-based LMS, you can custom-design banners that tease some of your most helpful content. Your goal is to make the LMS dashboard the most informative place your learners could possibly go for answers to their questions. (You certainly don’t want them diving down rabbit holes on the internet and wasting precious firm time.) Keep the dashboard fresh!
6. Work with your firm’s marketing team to plan an exciting rollout
It’s one thing to know you’ve got an amazing training tool at your fingertips, it’s another to spread the word in a way that gets everyone else excited. Ask your marketing team if they’d lend a creative hand in launching the LMS. Host competitions and reward the people who take their first class or complete their learning paths before anyone else in their department. Create buzz!
7. Create, launch and host “how to use the LMS” sessions
Every new-tech launch needs a strong rollout. Luckily, since you have an LMS, you can extend your reach again. (You don’t have to host 10 poorly attended lunch-and-learns!) Create a “How to Use the LMS” learning path in the LMS! Then, send an email out with login instructions and assign it to all of your learners. You can even set a deadline for completion.
8. Prove ROI of your law firm training program with regular reports
Here’s where an LMS really pays off for training professionals. How many times have you been told that training is a “resource suck?” With an LMS, you can create reports that prove ROI for your training program. For example, if the Family Law department goes from 25% adoption of Word Styles protocols to 85%, that improvement translates directly into enhanced efficiency and superior client products.
9. Tie achievements to HR performance reviews
Want to make certain that your training program turns into a full-blown learning culture shift at your firm? Tie achievements to performance reviews. If employees know that their pay raises and bonuses depend on their adoption of certain skills, you can be darned sure they will pursue those learning objectives.
10. Maintain excitement with gamification and recognition
Finally, keep the momentum going! With a cloud-based LMS, you can build gamification into your learning paths, creating friendly competition among departments or new hires. If your marketing team does internal communications, ask them to recognize learning achievements in the firm’s newsletter. Offer certificates (and gift cards!) to those who go above and beyond, turning themselves into power users by learning new skills every month.
If your firm is planning to be competitive 5 to 10 years from now, it must embrace new technologies and work at maximum efficiency. That means you need to adopt a learning culture and these 10 proven steps can get you there.
Need Help?
Do you need help implementing these steps for your law firm training program? Start with a demo of the SavvyAcademy Learning Management System, which comes loaded with training content designed exclusively for the legal industry. Call 303-800-5408, or email info@savvytraining.com, or book a demo on Calendly: https://savvytraining.com/Get-Started/#Book-A-Demo