Sell a Solution to Their Problems:

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The New

Librarian

ILTA

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The following interview with Don MacLeod and Elaine Lee offers two different approaches on how law firms can create training programs for their environments.

Barbara Fullerton has been in the information professional field for over 15 years with experience in vendor relations and corporate and law libraries. Over the past decade, she has been an active member of AALL, SLA and other regional librarian and information professional chapters. She has written and spoken on many topics, including gadgets, mobile apps, privacy issues, data mining, cybertheft and the Gumshoe Librarian. She can be contacted at [email protected].

Don Macleod is the Manager of Knowledge Management at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. He has been with the firm for over seven years. Don is the author of several research books, and one of his specialties is teaching attorneys and information professionals online search techniques. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Elaine Lee is the Content Integration Lead at Baker & Hostetler, and she has been with the firm since the beginning of this year. Elaine’s background includes working as a West librarian relations manager, and she was a longtime librarian in New York City with roles at White & Case LLP and Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. Elaine can be contacted at [email protected].

Sell a Solution to

Their Problems:

Training Today’s Lawyers

by Barbara Fullerton

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Elaine Lee: I just began with the firm at the beginning of the year. Some of my responsibilities include developing training

programs for attorneys and working with vendors to develop these programs. I am also

responsible for implementing news alerts via a current awareness platform that delivers

relevant news in a timely fashion. Don MacLeod: I started at

Debevoise as the electronic services librarian and then took over as manager of the knowledge management group within the library and

knowledge management department. However, I am still responsible for new lawyer orientation, a three-hour mandatory class for all incoming first-years, summers and

lateral hires. Much of my time is spent managing the intranet. I then, in turn, teach new lawyers what’s

available to them and how best to use the tools at their disposal.

How has your position

evolved over the years?

Don:

The most challenging part

of any training program is getting in

front of the lawyers. Making attendance

mandatory helps a great deal! We also

try to get in front of practice groups at their

formal luncheons. Something we found that

works well for our younger associates, who are still

in “school mode,” is exercise questions. I give them

a list of research problems that require them to search

through the resources I’ve just taught them to utilize. I also

throw in a couple of questions that require them to ask for help from

me or one of the other librarians in the room. This drives home the point that the research staff is

a key resource for legal research as well. These exercise questions are remarkably popular. Using

them is a technique I learned from our late colleague Helen Lawless, who was a junior high

school teacher before she became a law librarian. Much of what I know about teaching

lawyers I learned from Helen. I find that training that is brief,

immediately relevant and skills-oriented is a

good approach.

Elaine:

I make sure that I work

with the HR trainers to get onto the calendar for

new hires, and I work with the IT trainers to make sure

that our program offerings are integrated with their software

calendaring system. I sit in on some of our practice group meetings to

ensure that our programs are in the areas that the firm wants to focus on.

Since we have 11 offices with disparate training needs, it takes coordination

and feedback to ensure that our programs are timely and relevant. In

addition, since some of the training sessions need to be remote, sending

an agenda to participants ahead of time helps them anticipate what

will be covered during the training. Leaving time at the end of

the session for questions and identifying a contact for

further training is also important.

What strategies do

you use for training and

development at the

law firm?

(3)

Don: If lawyers find what they need when they need it or understand whom to call if they can’t, then I think the training has been successful. When I get a call from a lawyer that begins, “You showed us that website where you can…,” I take that as

a sign the instruction got through.

What makes a

training program

successful?

Elaine: A training program is successful if a) it is attended, b) questions are asked during or after the presentation that indicate interest in the subject, c) it is vetted and part of a larger vision for the training needs of the firm, d) there is partner-level

endorsement of the program, and e) there is desire for repeat programs after it has occurred.

Elaine: I typically work with an associate to customize training to ensure relevancy. I like having scenario-based training programs instead of functionality-based programs.

The database training programs that simply go through functionality are quite tedious. Most people like to know

why they should attend a program or why they should care about what a database can do. Even if I have an

external vendor presenting during one of my training sessions, I aim to find an internal champion (typically with partner approval and associate participation) to vet the training presentation beforehand. If it is a GoToMeeting, I have an associate introduce the call. This way there

is already an internal champion for the product, and it’s not a sales pitch.

How do you transform or

customize your training program

to meet the needs of your clients

(attorneys and staff)?

Don: We try to group classes by broad practice area,

e.g., corporate attorneys in one group and litigators in another. Deal lawyers don’t really need to Shepardize cases, so it’s of no benefit to show them how to do that. I also try to pitch what I’m talking about to the general level of experience. Summer associates who haven’t yet taken securities law at school,

for example, don’t know what a Form 8-K is or what it’s designed for. So I simply show a couple of tools they can use to perform SEC

research. With a more experienced group, I get into greater detail. When teaching laterals or new counsel or partners, I focus not so

much on the nuts and bolts of research, but on reviewing what resources we offer them and how to customize the services

we provide to tailor the information to their practice.

(4)

Don: We keep precise metrics on attendance, and then use a service known as Research Monitor to see if our

training translates to increased usage of the services or applications we have taught. We can usually tell how well the training went if we see a subsequent

uptick in usage.

How do you measure the

success of the firm’s training

program?

Elaine: If a program is well-received, I usually get asked to do another one, or I get asked if it was recorded. Our department has also developed online modules that attorneys can

access for on-demand training needs. They are one- or five-minute videos on many

different topics.

Don: We maintain a calendar for scheduled training. We also send updates in our firmwide weekly newsletter that we circulate to all legal and support staff. The best marketing, though, is when

a practice group or another department invites us to teach. That means our prior efforts have been successful.

Success breeds success, and one training class will lead to another.

How do you market and/or brand

your training program?

Elaine: To announce a program, we

use a training calendar and monitor responses via confirmation email messages. Hopefully we will be able to use social media to advertise programs

in the future.

Elaine: Every training program I offer has buy-in from a partner in the specific practice area. I then work with an assigned associate to work out the details of the training. If I’m working with an outside vendor on the database

training, I look for an associate to introduce the program. No one likes to sit through an

irrelevant program.

How do you ensure

the training program is

aligned with the needs of

the attorneys and staff?

Don: We talk to the practice groups and make changes based on their feedback and our current roster of resources.

(5)

Elaine: I suggest networking with other librarians for ideas.

Don: ILTA and most law library organizations like AALL or, in my area, LLAGNY (Law Librarians of Greater New York)

host training tutorials and “how-tos.” These can be great resources to learn how to develop training ideas. So are the publications they make

available to their members.

What other organizations

and resources are available to

help your peers learn more about

training and development ideas?

Elaine: I suggest networking with other librarians for ideas.

Don: Identify a problem or a pain-point for lawyers, and then offer a solution to that problem. I think it’s best to think of training

as a service that delivers on the implicit promise that I will make you a more skilled, a more efficient or a smarter lawyer if you come to the class. Rather than saying, “Come to knowledge mosaic training,” I find it’s better to say, “Learn to find what companies reveal in their SEC

filings” or “Discover how to retrieve cases simply by typing citations into a search box.” Sell a solution to a problem. Don’t try to sell a boring tour of a website. Training should adhere to the principles of adult learning: Classes should be brief, they should offer concrete skills that are immediately applicable to the practice,

and they should be convenient for the lawyers. The program should respect, and even flatter, the lawyers’ intelligence and

skill, and speak directly to their need to acquire new skills.

And obviously, trainers should have some affinity for teaching. They should be good speakers, they should know the subject matter and be able to answer questions succinctly. (A sense of humor doesn’t hurt.) As a nonlawyer, I’m not qualified to teach legal concepts or principles. But if I can show an attorney how to find something in five minutes that otherwise would have taken her an

hour or more to locate, then the training program has done its job.

Elaine: Partner-backed, timely topics, brief and scenario-based training make for a successful program. When a program is partner-backed, it gives it significance; timely topics satisfy

an immediate need; being brief is a way to ensure maximum attention, as most adult learners can only

absorb about 20 minutes of information at a time; and scenario-based training ensures that users

can transfer the learned skills into real-life situations.

What would be

your recipe for a great

training program in a

law environment?

(6)

Don: Lawyer attends the library’s WestCheck class and uses it to find a case that cites bad law in opponent’s

brief; wins dismissal of the case.

If a tweet were to

describe one of your

success stories, what

would it say?

Elaine: When will you offer that program again?

This article was first published in AALL/ILTA’s October 2012 white paper titled “The New Librarian” and is reprinted here with permission. For more information about AALL, visit their website at www.aallnet.org. For more information about ILTA, visit their website at www.iltanet.org.