Gaye Mara

Gaye Mara

Background

I've spent most of my professional career working in or with law firms in the area of lawyer training and development. And like most employers, law firm management tends to attribute any performance problem to the worker, and to see only two possible solutions to the problem: training or termination.

The Project

After going out on my own as a consultant, my very first project involved developing a training curriculum for a 50-lawyer firm. The firm was growing fast and had hired a lot of very junior associates it wanted to get off to a good start.

I arrived at the firm's offices for our first meeting all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, armed with a proposal for a comprehensive needs assessment as Phase One of the project. The offices were gorgeous and in a high-rent district; they overlooked a lovely brick courtyard and had a view to the Potomac River.

I quickly learned that the partners who had brought me in could see no justification for a needs assessment (hmm, sound familiar?). They felt they were well aware of the associates' needs, and we spent that first meeting discussing them.

A particularly vehement gripe the partners had was that the associates didn't seem to know how to do proper legal research in the law books in the firm's library, and instead relied exclusively on the expensive shortcut of online legal research (something the major vendors get law students addicted to by providing it free on campus). Their complaint seemed reasonable; it was one I had heard many times before when I worked in-house. (Current day postscript: The advance of technology has made this a moot issue; today virtually all legal research is performed online.)

On the grounds that asking for associates' input would get them more invested in the program, I persuaded the partners to allow me to interview a representative sample of our prospective trainees.

The Surprise

I launched into the interviews, excited to be able to use my needs assessment questionnaire after all. And because it had been such a big issue for the partners, I threw in a question about legal research specifically.

The associates' complaint? They couldn't get access to the law books in the library because they were not on the shelf.

I visited the librarian, who told me the firm's rapid growth had squeezed the space available to the library. They had run out of shelf space, and all the newer law books were in a storeroom, still packed in the boxes in which they had arrived.

So any training we might have put together on using the law books, even assuming such training was necessary, would have been useless.

The Lesson(s) Learned

1. There's more than one way to skin a cat. If something – such as a needs assessment – is essential to the success of your project, find a way to get it done. Otherwise, run – do not walk – away from the project, because it will fail and you will only end up looking bad.
2. Silos rule. Never assume that the people in an organization are communicating with one another about even the most obvious matters.

About the Author:

Gaye Mara produces continuing education and training resources for lawyers, including Professional Development Quarterly and The Capital CLE Calendar. She has been a member of ISPI Potomac Chapter since 1994, and is a Past President of the Chapter. She can be reached at
maraeg@profdev.com.