A blended-learning program combining internal expertise along with Hotshot and Praktio resources helped a newly-merged firm get incoming associates up to speed quickly.

---

When first-year associates at McDermott Will & Schulte joined the firm during the final week of the billable year, the Professional Development (PD) team faced a high-stakes challenge: a narrow window for training, a lot of ground to cover, and a firm that had just completed a major merger. Their answer was practice group-specific multi-track boot camps that drew on Hotshot's experiential programs and videos and Praktio's interactive exercise-based training to deliver a genuinely blended learning experience built around getting associates practice ready from day one.

The Challenge: One Week, One Chance

The timing alone made the task daunting. "New associates started the last week of the billable year, so we knew we had that one week to really home in on training and what we could do to maximize that time," says Laura Friedman, Associate Director of Professional Development, who oversaw the transactions-focused track. With onboarding underway and associates not yet assignment-ready, any billing during that period would have had limited impact. Instead, the PD team chose to leverage the time strategically, asking: what targeted training would accelerate their development and enable them to ramp up quickly?

The answer had to address more than just knowledge gaps. The firm had recently completed a merger, bringing together two distinct cultures. "Practice ready" was the phrase the team kept returning to—not just competent in theory but equipped to contribute on real matters as soon as possible. Client cost-consciousness was part of the equation too. Firms and their clients are increasingly sensitive to the cost of on-the-job learning for junior lawyers, raising the stakes for early-career development programs to deliver.

The transactions group added another layer of complexity: 13 different groups, each with its own focus areas: investment management, general M&A, finance, restructuring, and more. Getting everyone to a common baseline without building 13 separate curricula was a core part of the design challenge.

Three Tracks, One Approach

The PD team decided to turn that week into boot camps, structured into three parallel tracks—transactions, health and life sciences, and litigation—each running across three to four half-days, all virtually. This case study highlights the transactions and litigation tracks. Though the tracks had different content and used their tools in different sequences, the underlying philosophy was consistent: outsource the foundational material so internal presenters can focus on strategy, judgment, and firm-specific practice.

"Outsourcing the basics allows them to hear strategy and experiential anecdotes from our internal people, who can immediately dig into those key topics," says Maria Arlotto, Associate Director of Professional Development, who led the litigation track. "You don't have to start out at a rudimentary level. You can get into the strategic pieces of it, like why I might do this in my discovery responses, because of X or Y."

The Transactions Track: Built for Doing

On the transactions side, Laura and her team built the boot camp around interactive learning. They defined a clear goal of delivering an immersive, experiential learning program for their associates. They wanted the associates to work together during the day on simulated exercises—and to be prepared to get the most out of those live sessions, both by doing level-setting prep work and reinforcing post-work.

To accomplish these plans, Laura and her team leveraged both Hotshot and Praktio resources, alongside redesigned internal content. They used three of Hotshot's experiential programs across the four days to deliver simulated, live training led by the firm's lawyers. Internally, they engaged their team’s instructional designer to take hour-long lectures recorded from prior boot camps and rebuild them as twenty-minute interactive modules, with quizzes and short exercises woven between brief segments of content. Rather than lecturing on foundational concepts, the sessions assumed associates completed assigned internal modules and Praktio on-demand courses and were ready to engage with realistic exercises. Following the live sessions, associates completed reinforcing Praktio training to lock in the lessons.

The result was a program where no two sessions felt the same—and associates could discover which modes of learning stuck best for them.

One example: a Hotshot-based NDA exercise held on a Thursday afternoon. Associates were introduced to the exercise over Zoom, then organized into live or virtual working groups. Smaller offices with 2 – 3 associates were looped together into shared Zoom rooms to work through it collaboratively. When it came time for the debrief, partners joined breakout conversations organized by geography: New York, Chicago, and a combined group representing everyone else.

Praktio served as the reinforcement layer, assigned as both pre-boot camp homework and nightly review tied to the following day's topic. "Each night, they were given homework that was tied to the topic for the following day," Laura explains. "We were very explicit that we would be tracking their completion of these assignments. These types of experiences are what will be expected of them as a junior associate."

That expectation-setting mattered. The majority of associates completed all required sessions, and the team continued Praktio assignments after the boot camp ended to reinforce concepts once associates were fully engaged with client work.

The Litigation Track: Pre-work First, Practice to Reinforce

The litigation track took a somewhat different path, with Maria opting for a heavier emphasis on pre-work and a more sequential deployment of the tools. Hotshot videos were assigned before and between boot camp sessions, giving associates a baseline that allowed live sessions to skip past basics entirely.

"I want our lawyers to hear from McDermott partners about strategy," Maria says, "but they don’t need to spend time on the basics, which they've already learned about through Hotshot pre-work." In-person participants in New York then split their live sessions between the firm's two physical offices on alternating days, which was a deliberate choice to help associates from both legacy firms integrate across the combined organization.

Leveraging science-backed principles of "spaced repetition," Praktio was rolled out to the litigation track associates a few weeks after the boot camp, as a focused practice layer once associates had time to digest the initial content. "We wanted to give them a little bit of time to have things sink in," Maria says. "Now that time has passed, we're asking them to go back in with what they've learned to get practice reps."

A Neutral Ground in a Merged Firm

One benefit of working with external content that wasn't part of the original plan but proved genuinely valuable: the Hotshot fact patterns and discussion guides gave the newly merged firm a common, neutral reference point. "Having a third-party neutral fact pattern meant we didn't have to pull a McDermott agreement or a Schulte checklist," Laura notes. It created space for co-presenters from both legacy firms to participate as equals, focused on the learning, rather than representing one firm's approach over another's.

The team even rotated which physical office hosted each day's New York sessions, reinforcing the message: this is one firm now, these are your colleagues, and you belong in both spaces.

What Made It Work for Partners

Securing meaningful partner participation in a boot camp during the height of the fall rush could have been a challenge, but the program was intentionally designed to make engagement seamless. Preparation was streamlined to respect their time: each interactive exercise required only a fifteen-minute prep call and time to review a five-page partner packet. “The content itself was rooted in the work partners handle every day, making their contributions both natural and impactful,” Laura says. “The partners know this content inside out and were chosen to help train our next generation of lawyers.”

Partners appreciated not having to build materials from scratch. And that reduced friction translated into real engagement. "Our partners are extremely invested in the next generation of attorneys," Laura says. "They're going to be working with them on cases and deals and trials, and they want to make sure those associates have what they need to be successful." Maria adds that the level of partner enthusiasm she's seen at this firm has been exceptionally high. “McDermott partners are excited to raise their hands to lead associate training.”

Looking Ahead

The team's goal for fall 2026 is to bring the boot camps together in person, which is a change supported by the 2025 cohort's feedback. "We want to maximize the value of that time being in person," Maria says. "We want people actually working on projects together in teams." That shift will make pre-work even more important: associates will need to arrive having already engaged with foundational content so that in-person time can be devoted entirely to application and collaboration.

Tips for Other PD Teams

For PD professionals at firms with fewer resources wondering whether something like this is possible, Maria’s advice is straightforward: lean on external partners for foundational work and save your internal bandwidth for what only you can provide.

"Partnering with experts makes our job in PD easier," Maria says. "If I were at a firm with very few people on the PD team, I would rely on external experts like Praktio and Hotshot as much as possible for things like creating scenarios, videos, and exercises. That makes our lives a lot easier."

Beyond resourcing, two practical lessons stood out:

• First, be explicit with associates about why each assignment matters. Laura’s team didn’t just hand out homework—they connected the dots, telling associates exactly how tonight’s prep tied to tomorrow’s session and what they’d be doing on real matters the following week. That framing turned checking boxes into buying in.
• Second, respect the realities of associate schedules. On-demand content gave associates the flexibility to learn at times that worked around their billable work assignments—a design choice that made the program impactful rather than just mandatory.

---

Hotshot and Praktio can work with your firm to implement many of the ideas above. Contact Hotshot and Praktio to learn more.