We all know that new junior associates arrive at law firms fresh out of law school without much real world experience. Sure, they may have done some research during their clerkships, but that’s a far cry from handling the kind of billable work that feeds law firms’ bottom lines. It’s no surprise that a recent survey shows that almost half of new associates say their law schools have not adequately prepared them. Many law firm partners believe that’s quite an understatement.
In a world where clients no longer want to subsidize associate training, law firms want to get their associates up to speed as quickly as possible in order to compete. The first 12 months lay the foundation for new associates to thrive and contribute to the firm’s needs. Unfortunately, instead of employing simulation-based, and data-driven training, many law firms use old-school, passive training methods that don’t facilitate developing critical thinking skills or even the ability to adequately remember the concepts taught.
Just as athletes need practice, training, and feedback to improve their game, and musicians need to practice scales and techniques to master their instrument, so too do associates need to engage in practice or simulation assignments and receive data-driven feedback to develop their fundamental legal skills. Simulation-based training that includes data-driven feedback is the pathway to get associates to build up the muscles they need to hit the ground running on real assignments.
We are all familiar with the traditional methods many law firms use to train their associates.
Many law firms today require new associates to passively sit through videos, PowerPoint presentations and lectures with little opportunity to immediately apply what they have learned. Partners usually deliver the lectures, but sometimes must cancel or postpone due to more crushing client priorities. Partners or senior associates may take time out of their other work to lead discussions about videos and template documents, but there is little opportunity for associates to apply what they have learned to real-world situations and receive feedback on their work
In an effort to upgrade their training, more law firms are turning to third party training companies for prepared videos and materials. Though the videos from many of these companies may be polished, the learning model is often still quite passive.
Even the follow-up exercises (if there are any) typically involve rote document templates or exercises that have not been developed with much thought about what to do when situations vary from the template, as they most certainly will when the associates are turned loose on real-life problems. Associates also complain that these follow-up exercises don't typically give them the feedback they need from their efforts to really ascertain if they are getting the concepts or lessons.
When training does not pique the curiosity of associates or help them develop critical thinking skills, they have no idea what to do when a real-life situation does not exactly mirror what they learned about in their lectures. This kind of learning also does not delve into how clients think and why an option may work well for one client but not for another. When training does not include data-driven feedback, it’s dangerous.
Sometimes new associates aren’t given much in the way of training. They may just be thrown in to sink or swim after only very basic instruction. This may result in multiple mistakes that senior attorneys must take time to correct or risk jeopardizing their clients’ best interests.
Many firms (with or without other forms of training) assign each new associate a mentor. There’s no doubt that access to a welcoming mentor can be invaluable to a new associate, but mentoring alone is not a panacea.
First of all, good mentoring takes time, and that means time that the senior attorney can’t spend rain-making or serving clients. Then there is the reality that some mentors are much better than others. When a mentor is involved and savvy about good educational methods, they can help boost an associate to success. But if an associate is assigned a mentor who is uninterested, too busy or just not particularly good at the mentoring role, the associate is put at a distinct disadvantage that is likely to affect their entire career. For these reasons, mentoring should be bolstered by more structured, consistent training for all new associates.
People learn in different ways, but some things are universal. People are much more likely to learn if
How to achieve all that? The steps to an effective, experiential associate training program that include simulations and feedback are:
Experiential associate training needs to start with imparting knowledge of a broad range of legal topics, but instead of subjecting associates to the equivalent of “death by PowerPoint” or interminably long training videos, it’s demonstrably more effective to actively engage associates and to provide them with bite-sized training sessions. These micro-learning sessions enable better comprehension and increased retention, with the added benefit of enabling busy associates to get back to their other tasks more quickly.
The value of micro-learning is supported by multiple studies. Consider:
After they have been presented with concepts the firm wants them to know, it’s time to stretch the associates’ cognitive skills by asking them to apply what they have learned to real-world situations via mock simulations.
In the real world, the practice of law is rarely neat and tidy. Unexpected issues and a few surprises are the norm. Therefore, associates should not be asked to apply the knowledge they just learned in template fashion. Instead, give them real documents to consider and messy scenarios that may include incomplete information, complex procedural histories, conflicts, loopholes, business constraints, gray areas and unexpected client preferences. Life never follows a template, and neither should associate training. It’s important that associates learn to think creatively, make hard decisions, apply knowledge to new situations and search for better options.
To build synthesis skills, associates should not be handed everything they need all in one place. They should be forced to pull information from a variety of sources such as secondary documents, memoranda, mock email and more.
In some training programs, senior attorneys lead groups of associates in solving the assignment and call that active, experiential learning. But it isn’t, because associates are never given an opportunity to figure out the problems on their own before the discussion. For truly experiential learning that builds critical thinking skills, associates need to do the work themselves. Then come the group discussions and reviews.
It’s important to highlight that for associates to remember what they learned and understand how to use that knowledge, they need to immediately put what they have learned to work. People are going to forget a lot of what you tell them, so you need to shore up what associates have learned in multiple ways. When associates practice soon after a learning session, it not only helps them to retain the information but also to understand how to apply it.
Once the associates have completed their simulation assignment , it’s not enough to just go over the answers.
When the associates submit their completed assignments, a qualified reviewer should evaluate the assignments and prepare to provide each associate with direct feedback on their assignments according to a standardized rubric that evaluate whether the associate:
(a) followed instructions and apply the right concepts to the assignment,
(b) identified all of the legal and business issues in the assignment, and
(c) developed with practical solutions for those issues, including best practice (e.g., approach, drafting techniques, etc.)
Weaved into this rubric are competency themes that are important for developing newbie associates, including synthesis, attention to detail, interpreting client needs, risk allocation, economic terms, drafting techniques, etc.
When the associates receive their feedback report on the assignment, they should receive detailed feedback on how they performed on each issue in the assignment (e.g., what they got right, what they missed, and why, etc.)
During the live review session, the reviewer should go through the submitted assignments and drill down on key trends based on the associates’ decisions, have the associates explain them, and discuss the correct paths to arrive at the best solutions for the particular client.
Not only does a live review set the associate in the right direction, but it cements the learning and encourages deeper comprehension. A recent analysis that examined experiential learning approaches from a variety of disciplines showed that people learn better when they have to share information and explain what they have learned.
But reviewers shouldn’t just wing it or consistency will suffer. They should be able to rely on in-depth lesson guides that cover the nuances of every issue presented by the exercise and inform the reviewer about how to probe the associate’s knowledge. The lesson guide should also guide the reviewers where/when to weave in their war stories, as well as the general feedback trends they observed from the submitted assignments.
Like any kind of business, law firms can’t afford to make unnecessary expenditures in either time or money. So even when presented with evidence that simulation-based training with feedback is much more effective than traditional training methods, law firms may sometimes be hesitant. They worry that better, actively engaged training may take too much time from associates’ duties, take too much work to build or administer, or cost too much.
Nobody has a magic wand that will turn raw junior associates into productive attorneys overnight. But this type of highly active and feedback-based learning will not only build better critical thinking skills and content knowledge; it will also cost less time and money in the long run.
After all, when associates are poorly trained, they
The effects of inadequate training may be reaching crisis levels. The NALP Foundation reported that associates leaving firms within five years reached an all-time high last year (2023) – by the tune of 82%! It was 72% after four years. That is a huge cost to firms when you consider that the cost of an associate leaving can average $200,000 to $500,000 (considering the costs of recruiting, training costs, administration, human resource hours and other factors). And that doesn’t even include the costs of the time senior attorneys spend correcting the mistakes of poorly trained associates while doing actual client work. And let’s face it, high turnover doesn’t exactly serve as a resounding recommendation to top talent when firms try to recruit.
Ineffective training is one of the main reasons (or causes of why) some associates leave, but it is also an indirect cause of other reasons such as associates not being given substantive work (because they are not properly prepared for it) and being pigeon-holed into areas the associates do not want to pursue.
Active, simulation-based or experiential associate training that includes data-driven feedback that focuses on requiring associates to think critically is a foundation for those law firms that want to remain competitive heading into the future. A firm develops competent, productive attorneys when they create a dynamic learning environment where junior associates can learn by doing, make mistakes, and receive direct feedback in a safe training environment. This is so much better than associates first trying out their lessons on actual clients. Being able to rely on well-trained associates also enables senior attorneys to get back to their own work and spend less time correcting the mistakes of junior associates.
Active, engaged, experiential training that includes data-driven feedback is not a magic wand, but it’s the fastest and most efficient way to improve retention, reinforce legal concepts, encourage critical thinking and good decision-making, boost productivity and enhance the confidence needed by practicing attorneys.