Guest Post by Jay S. Fleischman

There’s a lot of talk about growing your practice, but one thing’s for sure: we can grow our client base all we want, solidify the bottom line, and make clients love us. But if we don’t have time to train new staffers, we cannot succeed long term.

It’s the bane of every lawyer’s existence—the dread of having to train a new staff member. Whether it’s a paralegal, a receptionist, or a new lawyer, there’s always a significant lag time between the first day of work and when the newbie becomes competent enough to handle even the most mundane tasks.

Even an experienced professional needs some time to get acclimated to the office: how it works, the normal ebb and flow of the day, where to find the coffee filters, and the like. But I hit on a surefire method of training a number of years ago that has made the growing pains hurt a lot less.

I let today’s employees train tomorrow’s new hires. Let me tell you how I do it.

Train Your Next Employee the Old-Fashioned Way

New employee comes into the office on the first day, all fresh-faced and ready to tackle the world. You call him into the office (might be a female, but let’s use the male pronoun for the moment for convenience if nothing else) and promptly begin rattling off information about the firm, where to find things, and so forth.

From there, he moves to someone else for further instruction on various aspects of the job and the office. He’s scribbling notes furiously, trying to keep up. And when his day is done, that notepad goes into his desk for future reference.

Back up a bit. What if part of his training was to enter the information into a collaborative workspace such as a wiki or a Google Site? Then, as part of your oversight into how Mr. Newbie was doing, you’d go into that document and make sure he got it all right.

Suddenly, you’ve got the makings of a procedures manual. A road map of sorts for someone starting in this particular position from the perspective of that new employee. In creating that document, you’re sure to have information that a new employee would find helpful, not only what you as the employer deem useful.

You’ll end up making some changes and adding information to make the document complete, but the end product is far more useful and comprehensive than would otherwise be the case. Mr. Newbie did it for you, and let’s be honest with one another—you’d probably never get around to doing it on your own, would you?

Allow the Document to Evolve and Grow

Your newly formed training document will continue to change as new things pop up: new questions to be answered, new problems to solve, and new procedures to put into place. As the boss, you’ll end up telling someone else what to do and how to accomplish it. To ensure that they get it right as quickly as possible, part of their job will be to spit back those instructions to you in the same collaborative work environment.

Keep It Online

Everyone is going to need access to the training manual as they go through their tenure with the firm. Passwords to office suppliers change, phone numbers get updated, and court requirements get more complex (funny how they never get simpler). If your manual is in paper form, then it’s going to get messy, and if it resides on someone’s hard drive, then it’s got to be printed out and distributed regularly.

An online collaborative work environment gives everyone in the office (as well as virtual assistants and outside professionals) access to the right way to get things done in the firm. Many offerings can be password protected so you can keep prying eyes away from your inner workings.

You can rely on each person following the right steps to get his or her job done every time (well, most of the time—we’re all human).

The Tools Are Available (and Free!)

Many online collaborative work environments are free and easy to use. Some of my favorites are:

• MediaWiki, which is the same platform that powers Wikipedia (this is what I use—requires installation on your server);
• Google Sites;
• Google Docs (slightly more clumsy for this purpose, but it works in a pinch);
• Wikia; and
• WikiSpaces.

Image credit: ralphbijker
(Flickr)

Jay S. Fleischman is a consumer bankruptcy lawyer in New York and online legal marketing consultant. Follow him on Twitter at @JayFleischman.