As most Savvy fri-ents (clients + friends) already know, I am sort of a geek about learning, how our brains work, the best ways to inspire skills adoption, and so on. In fact, in addition to my many years of law firm and legal industry work, I have a Master of Science degree in Education. I really love studying this stuff! So maybe it will be no surprise that one of my favorite theories of learning is called, “Zygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development.” Stay with me here because that high-falutin’ title is actually an easily understandable concept, and it undergirds the way that Savvy has always recommended that law firms deliver training.

First, some background.

What is Zygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development?

Lev Zygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is a concept in developmental psychology that describes the gap between a learner’s current level of independent functioning and their potential level of development with guidance and support from a more knowledgeable individual. According to Zygotsky, the ZPD represents the range of tasks or skills that a learner is not yet able to accomplish independently but can successfully achieve with assistance.

The ZPD recognizes that learning and cognitive development occur through social interaction and collaboration. It emphasizes the importance of scaffolding, which refers to the support provided by a more competent individual (such as a teacher, parent, or peer) to help a learner bridge the gap between their current abilities and their potential abilities. This support can involve various forms, such as instruction, modeling, questioning, and feedback.

Zygotsky (some people spell his last name with a V, or “Vygotsky “) believed that the ZPD is a critical area for learning because it provides opportunities for learners to acquire new knowledge and skills that they couldn’t accomplish on their own. As learners receive guidance and support within their ZPD, they gradually internalize the assistance and eventually become capable of performing the task independently. The ZPD is dynamic and can change over time as learners develop and acquire new skills.

Overall, Zygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development highlights the significance of social interaction, collaboration, and appropriate support in facilitating optimal learning and cognitive growth.

How Can Law Firms Use Zygotsky’s Theory in Technology Training?

Savvy has always recommended that law firms target training to their learner’s needs, which is the essential theme of Zygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. If you try to provide one-size-fits-all training programs, you will lose people who already know the skills you’re teaching, or those who need extra help. You will only be training to the middle, and maybe not even efficiently to them. Your goal should be to first figure out which skills your learners do not know how to do themselves, but could successfully adopt with training. Then, provide that specific training to each learner.

Easier said than done?

Many firms think that they HAVE to provide one-size-fits-all training because they don’t know how to assess each learner’s needs. But that is simply not true. All you need is the Legal Technology Assessment (LTA) or the Basic Office Technology Assessment (BOTA).

What are LTA and BOTA?

• LTA: The Legal Technology Assessment is a benchmark assessment and training platform. The results of a user’s LTA score can be used for marketing, professional development, on-boarding, rate negotiation, invoice review and more. Above all, benchmarked scores can be used to ensure legal professionals are getting the training they need on the technologies they use every day.
• BOTA: The Basic Office Technology Assessment is often marketed as an assessment tool for law school students, but we believe it is also a powerful new-hire assessment tool for law firms. BOTA pairs competence-based assessments with synchronous, active training in order to provide an effective, hands-on learning experience.

Once you’ve established a baseline for everyone’s skills, you can assign law firm-specific learning content or host trainings for groups of people with similar skill sets and learning needs. For example, you could tailor a training for the 40 people who need extra help on Word Styles. Or assign a “basic skills” learning path for people who need an introduction to your document management system.

If you deliver training via a learning management system, there’s more good news! Thanks to a collaboration between Savvy and Procertas, these training libraries are now available in SCORM format, meaning they are compatible with most learning management systems.

Data-Driven Learning

Zygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development is common sense, but it helps when education geeks articulate things that we know in our guts. That said, you cannot assign training to individuals based on gut instinct. You need data-driven assessments to help you target the right training to the right learners.

Not only do LTA and BOTA enable you to assess the final product of a person’s efforts, but they also tell you how long it took them to arrive at that final product, proving not only, “Can you do this?” but also, “Did you do it efficiently?” Watch this brief testimonial from Blackbaud Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Jon Olson.

Book a Demo of LTA and/or BOTA

If you, too, have been pursuing Zygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development in your training goals (maybe without even knowing the official theory) and you struggle to assess your learners, you should check out LTA and BOTA. (Thanks to our efforts to help Procertas transition these platforms to SCORM, Savvy is the exclusive reseller of LTA and BOTA in the legal industry.)

Would you like a short demo of the LTA and BOTA platforms and how they work? Contact Savvy today. Or watch this short demo on our YouTube channel.