Linked – The Importance of Professional Development
Obviously, I didn’t spend 5 years of my career as a full time trainer and not believe strongly in the importance of training and professional development, and I think most law firms would publicly agree with that. The challenge though, is at the end of this paragraph:
“Most law firms do not lack from training and professional development opportunities. We have arrangements and subscriptions from the local and state bar associations. Subscriptions and memberships to the American Bar Association, and other professional associations such as the American Association of Law Libraries, ILTA, the Legal Marketing Association, professional industry associations, and subscriptions to online, on-demand, and in-person classes through publishers and professional development companies, such as West LegalEdCenter, ARK or PLI. Some of these are unlimited subscriptions to any of the offered courses. The key to making the most of these training opportunities is stressing the importance of professional development to those in the department, and providing them the time and resources needed to attend the courses.”
It’s one thing to pay membership dues to ACEDS or ILTA or any other legal tech organization you want to talk about, it’s quite another to actually allow people to go away for training, and let them just be “away”. Whether you want to talk about online training, or onsite training, for many of us that comes with the understanding that not only am I going to have to attend training, and put in the work to make it worthwhile, but I’m also going to continue doing my full time+ job too. Nothing says you don’t really support professional development like expecting staff to work all night after a training day because you won’t make any other arrangements.
In essence, people are lacking in this area for the same reason they don’t use their vacation time. No one else does the work while they’re gone, it just becomes less stressful to stay at work.
http://www.geeklawblog.com/2018/01/the-importance-of-professional.html
