We’re excited to announce the launch of Hotshot PD, a resource for legal professional development.

The need for improved training in the legal industry has never been more important.

• Clients are resisting paying for junior associate time.
• Partners want better-prepared associates.
• Associates themselves have higher expectations about their training, both in terms of substance and delivery.

And this doesn’t just apply to associates. Law schools, law firms and corporate legal departments are looking at how they train all of their people so that they have the right combination of legal and business skills that clients expect.

On top of that, the world outside legal is relying on modern, more effective methods of learning, many of which can be used to improve legal training.

This puts PD in an increasingly strategic and critical role. After all, strong knowledge and skills across legal and business issues are at the heart of the legal profession. It’s what clients pay for and what lawyers deliver.

We therefore created Hotshot PD to give people a place to share, learn and keep current on these issues, and we’ll cover topics like:

• Trends in learning and development (both in and outside legal);
• Ed tech and its applications for legal;
• Client, partner and associate perspectives on PD;
• Case studies and articles from PD professionals about what they’re doing at their organizations;
• Sample training curriculums; and
• Emerging topics and trends impacting the profession.

Our first post is a practical guide on “flipping the classroom,” which is a training technique that replaces the traditional lecture model with a more engaging and effective way to learn. Now that the first years are starting, we thought it was a good time to cover this topic for anyone interested in trying new training methods at their firms.

We built this site for anyone interested in legal professional development, so please contact us with any ideas, suggestions or feedback or if you’d like to be a contributor for Hotshot PD.

We’d love to hear from you.