Law Practice Today

Training is extremely important in law firms as in any business. It’s particularly important when your firm is implementing a new process or procedure that involves technology. Going paperless most certainly involves technology, therefore – training. We often hear about software or hardware that “didn’t work” or “we have it, but we don’t use it.” I've learned that more often than not, those failures aren’t technology issues – they are [lack of] training issues.

Why Train

Training is a crucial element in moving your firm to a paper free environment. This movement will mark a major shift in how your law office operates. Hopefully, you have spent your money wisely on the software and hardware purchased to make this move. Assuming so, the next steps are to make sure everyone involved knows:

• The business value in less paper.
• How you plan to serve your clients better due to this “new way” of working on their matters.
• The proper procedures for each department. Examples include: How will the mail room participate? What will secretaries be responsible for in making the shift? How will attorneys use digital signatures to print less, and the reasons for why they should (see #1 and #2).
• The hardware resources available. That is, why does Marge have the double-sided high speed sheet-feed scanner while the attorneys got keyboard scanners?
• What software products are involved and what their roles are in processes. Does everyone have a pdf creator? What is used for OCR?

And most importantly, make sure everyone involved has had training and knows how to put it all together.

Who will do the training?

Depending on your purchases, your arrangements with vendors and your budget, the trainer could be just about anyone – and there’s nothing wrong with that. Just be sure that who ever it is understands your practice management goals, is familiar with the legal environment, and is going to be accepted by those he or she will train. We all know that attorneys and their staff will not have much respect for a trainer who cannot explain WHAT a feature or function will do for them. Trainers must be able to offer "real life" and relevant examples of the implementation of software functions. Secondly, (this is a tough one) – they must be LIKABLE, liked and respected. No one is going to volunteer their time to take instruction from someone they do not believe in.

What will be trained?

Deciding exactly what to train is the first step in going paperless. Having fewer physical files, naturally means having more virtual ones. Perhaps some advanced training on existing software is a good place to start. So before you even introduce new processes, procedures and tools, make sure your attorneys and staff know how to use related applications such as Word, Outlook, your document management system, and any litigation support programs that could be integrated. Adobe Acrobat isn't just for creating PDF files, it can be used to share comments, gather data from forms, copy from and even redact text.

When it’s time to work on the new hardware and software – or if this is a re-training initiative, it’s important that all features and function be understood. Here’s a conversation I had last week at my favorite law firm in Orlando:

Me: Hello, Attorney. What are you scanning there? (Yes, I readily assault users whom I suspect are misusing technology)

Attorney: This totally awesome 68-page agreement I just crafted. I need to email it to my client and want to send it as a PDF so they can't change it.

Me: Cool, you must be very proud! I’m sure they will love it. So uhhh, just curious here…you printed it out to bring it here and scan it back in?

Attorney: Oh yeah, then I picked it up from my computer as a PDF and attached it to an email.

Me: Well, yes, that’s very good. But I’m just wondering, don’t you have Word 2007 like everyone else in the firm? (This is a trick question – I KNOW he does)

Attorney: Yes, I’m sure I do.

Me: Well, why don't we go back to your office and I’ll take one minute of your time to save tens of minutes later.

Attorney: How?

Me: Word 2007 has a built in “Save as PDF” function.

Training matters and few can deny it, not just for moving into a paperless environment but also for maximizing the efficiencies that all that well-spent money on technology can offer. In the past, training was often looked upon as an afterthought – don’t allow history to keep repeating itself.