Hard skill training deals with the technical and functional aspects of the job.  Soft skill training focuses on professional development to enhance job performance and workplace effectiveness.  Both types of training play an equally important role for employees, whether they function as support staff, supervisors, middle managers or directors.

As part of workforce development, many business organizations have a centralized corporate training department that is responsible for providing both hard and soft skill training to its employees.  This is not the norm for law firms.  Instead of a centralized training department, you may find silos of training that are not always coordinated.  Within law firms are individual service groups (Information Technology, Human Resources, Library Services and Litigation Support Services), which are much like islands of training with no cross-functional coordination.  There is very little sharing of best practices and, unfortunately, no real knowledge sharing among the training resources across these service groups or offices.  Core competencies have not been clearly defined, and many law firms have no requirements for training.  The absence of leadership has left these diverse training resources without focus, and those who are tasked with training customarily "do their own thing."  Sadly, this means that these resources are not taking advantage of what each offers.

Begin with Strategy
Keep in mind that the reason organizations employ trainers and training departments is because they expect training to impact performance.  To impact performance, you must align training with the organization's business objectives.

An important step that law firms must take is to communicate its strategic goals to those charged with the responsibility of training.  Once these important goals have been identified by the firm's senior management team, training can be designed to support these objectives.  By developing a learning strategy that aligns training with strategic goals, law firms will be directly impacted by bottom line results, such as:

• Improvement in performance and productivity
  
• Reduction in costs
  
• Improvement in the level of customer service provided to clients

Meet the Challenge
In order to meet the increasing demand to stay competitive, law firms must recognize the need to shift away from training as an ancillary function and move toward training and education that is strategic.  And this shift in strategy must include placing an added priority on professional development training, not just for attorneys, but for all employees.

Why?  The development of "client service teams" has been identified as one of the most important factors in driving the success of a law firm and is recognized as a key competitive element for law firms.  For this reason, law firms are now placing great importance on distinguishing themselves by the level of client service they deliver.  If you need proof of this, just visit the websites of the top law firms in the country and see what is stated in their list of core values.

To develop highly effective client service teams, law firms must now gear their efforts toward professional development training.  Law firms will need to take a close look at their current workforce to identify critical gaps and what it will take to raise the current standard for client service.  Firms will have to focus on core versus context training.  This means learning to do things that make the difference at the end of the day - that add value and will grow the business.

A key initiative will be to develop those individuals who support client services and expand their people skills.  Retooling the skill sets of attorneys, paralegals and legal secretaries is an absolute necessity for law firms; they must learn to build effective workgroups and team synergy, communicate effectively, manage client relationships and deliver excellent client service.

In law school, attorneys receive no education on how to be an effective team member, so training them to adopt the principles of the team-based service delivery model is fundamental to a law firm's success in implementing standards for client service teams.

If you have any doubt that this training should be extended to the legal secretary, think again.  The face of the legal secretary has changed, and it requires more than just hard skills.  Today's legal secretary works as if she manages a small business.  Typically, a secretary supports three attorneys who may each generate a half million in revenue - totaling 1.5 million dollars.  In addition to document production duties, this individual is responsible for supporting the attorneys in managing their client relationships.  In this role, the legal secretary often represents the first line of communication to the client.  This requires verbal and listening skills, adaptability, confidentiality, the ability to solve problems and skills to deal appropriately with difficult people.  The list goes on.  Bottom line, legal secretaries play an important role, and it is critical that they grasp the importance of developing an external focus on clients, a key performance indicator for law firms.

By placing a priority on professional development for these individuals, law firms are challenged to offer higher levels of training and move toward performance management as a model for education.  To do this, the training arm of a firm must be transformed from a loose-knit, decentralized provider of training to a cohesive provider of performance improvement solutions, with the ability to design, develop and deliver training and education that will have impact.  The objective should be to build a true education team that can support the specialized expertise needed in law firms and achieve strategic training goals.  All of this requires careful guidance.

Determine Who Will Lead
In order to bring together the diverse training needs of an organization, effective leadership and management is required.  For most business organizations, this role falls to the human resources department, whose purpose is to serve the needs of the company, its managers and its employees - and help them to get the work done.  Human resource professionals understand performance management and the importance of engaging employees to work effectively and efficiently.  This is why many corporate training departments fall under the centralized umbrella of HR.

There's evidence that this approach has now made its way into a growing number of law firms.  HR professionals from the corporate sector have found their way into law firms, and they bring with them a unique perspective for training and professional development and the critical role it plays in employee development.  If you look closely, there are law firms that have made the leap to incorporate IT training under the wing of HR, combining its forces to develop a more centralized approach to education.  The marriage between HR and IT training is a definite trend for law firms, and one to watch carefully.  This natural progression is the formation of a strategic partnership that combines the efforts of both hard skill and soft skill training specialists, and the sharing of combined resources.  With the leadership of HR and the expertise of IT training specialists, a unique education team can be formed, which sets the stage for effective change to take place.

You may not have a centralized training department, so you will need to look at how to pool your resources most effectively and then determine the best way to lead those resources.  In no uncertain terms, guidance and assistance from human resources will provide the greatest benefit.  As you combine your resources, some training will likely be required.  This education team may need help with developing their presentation skills or assistance with the specific design and delivery of the topics for professional development training.  They may also need to have outside vendors who can provide the expertise the firm needs to deliver some of the learning content, but just remember, the more your trainers do, the better they become.

Realize the Gain
With your training department mobilized, the prospect of delivering strategically designed professional development training can become a reality.  Credibility is amplified, productivity is increased and service to the client is greatly improved.  In addition to achieving these strategic goals, professional development training also cultivates behaviors that have a positive impact upon the work environment.  Keep the following notable benefits in mind as you chart your course.

• Benefits of Professional Development
  Enhances performance and quality of service
  
• Increases employee responsibility and commitment to organizational goals
  
• Empowers employees to help themselves and develop personal integrity
  
• Helps individuals to respect the firm's organizational values
  
• Improves morale
  
• Fosters team work
  
• Builds future leadership

About our author . . .

Theresa Lundquist, Vice President of Education, is responsible for the development of assessment, education, and performance management strategies for Perfect Access Speer, a company known for providing customized education and e-learning solutions.  She has delivered professional staff development workshops on leadership, communication and time management, in addition to providing seminars on adult learning principles for trainers  She can be reached at tlundquist@paspeer.com or 612.239.5702.