If I am in a room with an academic law librarian for more than five minutes, I almost always get some form of this question:
What are the tech skills I should be teaching law students to better prepare them for working in the ‘real world?’
My answer is a pretty standard one. “Make sure
As mentioned in my last post, law students often respond to their poor scores on a basic Word assessment by explaining to me that they need not need worry about this tech stuff because “that is what secretaries are for.” I think this is wrong for a number of reasons, a few
90% of people don’t know how to use CTRL+F to find a word in a document or web page. Instead, they search the old-fashioned way, manually skimming the text.
This preponderance of ignorance is stupefying to me. But I want to be very clear that I am using the word “ignorance” in its most
I am disappointed every time I guest lecture a law school class.
Because anecdote is often more compelling than data, I’ll start with an example from two weeks ago. An adjunct professor who teaches one of those great law school classes with cool titles like Tomorrow’s Lawyer had his students take the Word module of
(xkcd)
Lawyers who entered the profession when the standard means of production were a dictaphone and a dedicated secretary will, without any sense of irony, EMAIL me to tell me that technology has no impact on the way they practice law. One of the most underappreciated characteristics of technology is how quickly it can be assimilated
Technology training is important. Competence-based assessments are a great technology training tool. At the outset, assessments permit trainees to test out of training they do not need. By identifying competencies and deficiencies, assessments serve as the basis for tailored training plans. Assessments then validate that training has been effective.
As formulated above, training
I, like most legal professionals, cringe at memories of sitting in a large room and having someone demonstrate the use of a technology tool. Despite my confirmed case of technophilia, I hated re-learning the basics and had a hard time absorbing anything new. Sitting through videos was even worse. The medium trumped the message.
These
I had my
Among the nontraditional stakeholders who bring so much to the delivery of legal services, technology trainers hold a special place in my little lawyer heart.
the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need