ALA Webinar Archives
The following Webinars are developed and conducted by ALA. Click on the Webinar title for more information and to purchase. Note: Archived Webinars do not count for CLM credit.
Administrator's Role as Coach in a Multi-Generational Workplace
The administrator who invests the energy in this newest skill set of coaching will reap rewards in personal and professional development, a productive work force, attracting and retaining the best talent, and enhancing business processes.
Alternative Work Arrangements
The pressure to provide alternate work arrangements for staff and attorneys is strong. But there is much more involved in setting up these arrangements than allowing someone to work from home.
Building a Better Budget
Review the reasons budgets are important and will provide participants with the knowledge and tools necessary to prepare better budgets. This program was designed for small- to medium-sized firm administrators.
Business Interruption/Disaster Recovery: Protect the Records
This Webinar focused on issues that involve protecting and recovering a firm's records in the event of a disaster. The speakers discussed where files are and should be stored and some best practices for storing records and files.
Communicating Benefits to Reach and Engage Employees
In today’s information-overloaded workplace, you face the challenge of reaching employees with critical communication about pay, benefits, and other HR issues. Participate in this program to learn how to engage employees more effectively and encourage them to take action.
Conflict Resolution: Why Can’t Everybody Just Get Along?
The economic environment is challenging and creating stress among our employees, lawyers and staff. Learn how legal administrators can find ways to manage difficult situations and difficult people to create an environment that supports and strengthens agreement among employees.
Control Stress Before It Controls You.
Explore techniques for dealing with stress, and identify ones that will work best for you. Remember, stress is a natural part of our lives and only becomes bad or ugly when it exceeds our ability to cope. As a legal administrator, you are always expected to cope.
Electronic Records Management: How to Manage Your ESI in the 21st Century
With the explosion of electronic communications - social media sites, twitter, regular "old" e-mail - managing the law firms' electronic records is becoming a significant challenge. If you can begin to address the issues surrounding ESI, you can start to build some processes to more effectively manage ESI in your firm.
Ethics in the Wired World
Internet communications have opened up an effective and efficient channel for communications – with clients, other attorneys, staff and friends. But with this efficiency come significant risks, including inadvertent breaches of confidentiality, lost e-mail devices, unethical website advertising, social networking and more. Learn to identify the risks and the steps you need to take to protect your firm, and take away ideas for developing your own ethics programs.
Finance for the Non-Financial Administrator
This program will provide you with a basic understanding of the significant drivers of law firm finance and profitability. In addition, the speaker will review key financial statements and how these statements are linked to each other.
Focus on Profitability: Revenue Based Management
Your firm budget is most effective when it is directly tied to business goals, yet fewer than 41% of the organizations surveyed indicated their budgets were tightly aligned. In this program, the speaker will cover a range of advanced budgeting techniques and analytical tools for the experienced legal administrator.
Green Law Firms Building a Sustainable Future
Corporate America is becoming heavily committed to "Going Green," one of the fastest developing trends in the U.S. Learn about the ABA-EPA Law Office Climate Challenge Program and the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Rating System, and look at strategies to enhance worker productivity, reduce absenteeism, and lower energy and supply costs.
Health Care Reform: What’s Happening?
There are far-reaching changes to our national health care system with the new health care law that impacts – in some ways significantly – employers and their employees. Join this program for an update on the current health-care reform landscape and its impact on employers
Help Associates Hit the Ground Running: Create an Orientation Program that Fits Your Firm
Help your new lawyers reach their full potential and the firm achieve its strategic business goals by getting associates off to the right start. Legal administrators are more involved in associate orientation than ever before.
Integrating Laterals: Get Those New Partners & Associates Up to Speed
Learn how to develop a roadmap with ideas, approaches and alternatives - and pitfalls to avoid - in exercising administrative leadership in the vital role of successfully integrating lateral hires.
Law Firm Innovation: Will You Lead or Follow?
If you understand that the legal industry is in transformation, if you "get" that your clients are looking for innovation in the way they receive legal services, if you want to take your practice, group or firm to the next level, if you have the courage to consider new options and try new techniques, then this session is for you. Examine the legal horizon and identify and discuss three things you and your firm should be doing now if you want to secure a leadership role in your markets.
Law Firm Profitability Enhancement
It's more important than ever to control costs, target your firm's financial strengths and increase profitability. Join this program to acquire a solid understanding of how to confidently determine the most profitable pricing and staffing arrangement. (3 ½ hour program)
Lead Your Office to Become an Extraordinary Place to Work
Discover ways to transform you office into a remarkable workplace, delivering not only superior client service but also satisfaction for each and every person who is part of that effort.
Leasing: The Fine Print Implications
Equipment leasing can have a significant impact on the firm’s finances if the leases are negotiated aggressively. Join this program to examine the fine print in lease contracts and the reasons firms deliberate over the lease vs. buy decision for office and technology equipment.
Legal Risks to Assessing Candidates by Social Network Sites
Social networks build online communities of people interested in exploring shared interests and activities. But there is often more information available than it might be prudent to know. Recognize how these sites operate (i.e., LinkedIn®, MySpace, Facebook).
Lockstep to Levels After the Dust Settled – Unlocked, Unloaded, Successful?
In this program, two industry leaders will discuss the different types of emerging compensation models, why there is not a “one size fits all” approach, how these models are intricately connected to the broader issues of talent management, and conclude with some best practices to support and guide your decision about whether or not your firm should make the move from lockstep to levels.
Managing the “Crowd” – Four Generations in the Law Firm
Different values, beliefs and attitudes based on when we were born, plus the cohort events in the world at that time, shape us. What steps can you take, and processes can you create that will help employees understand each other and function as a collegial and effective team.
Records Management – Finding the Needle in the Haystack and Why It’s Important
The ability to identify, organize, maintain and access needed information and properly dispose of the rest pays off in cost savings, efficiency, regulatory compliance and reduced litigation risk. This session provided some tips and strategies for storing and maintaining those all-important records.
Safe Stress!
This program will explore how successful administrators manage stress in times of change. Discover tools to identify the factors that cause stress and effective coping mechanisms.
Selling Blue Elephants: Client Marketing, Retention and Loyalty (LI)
In today’s challenging legal environment, every firm recognizes the value of client recruitment, retention and loyalty. Join this program to learn to scientifically evaluate all client contact opportunities and experiences.
Stepping Out of the Rubble: Developing a Disaster Recovery Plan that Works
In this session, the presenter provided an in-depth look at disaster planning, starting with proper funding, buy-in from the top, and the priorities.
Strategies for Digging Out of the E-Mail Bog
Explore good practices and technology features designed to enhance your productivity - not bog it down. Learn to identify and prioritize your e-mail with some simple but highly effective tools.
Strengthen Your Bottom Line with a Well-Built Budget
Learn how to build a budget-from the ground up-that can be used as a planning tool and a way to gently force policy decisions. Focus on how to use the budget to identify key information to manage cash flow and analyze how to strengthen the bottom line through increasing revenue rather than cutting costs.
The Better Mousetrap: Strategies for Meeting Associate, Partner, and Client Expectations
In this program, a partner and an associate begin the dialogue on how to work together to reshape individual interests into shared interests that will ensure continued success of the firm while recognizing the needs of all stakeholders.
The Keys to Develop and Implement the Firm's Dreaded Strategic Plan
The evidence is clear. Law firms that develop and implement thoughtful strategic plans outperform those that do not. Over time, they become more cohesive, more profitable and more sustainable institutions. Find the keys to develop and implement a successful strategic plan at you law firm.
The Social Networking Revolution
Should law firms really be on Facebook? How should law firms use LinkedIn? Should we have a podcast or Wikipedia listing? Isn't Twitter completely … ridiculous? Why should every ALA member have a personal Google Profile? Learn the various Web 2.0 and social networking services and explore ways to manage them in the best interests of your firm.
The Writing Wheel
Among the many tasks of a legal administrator, you must be able to produce well-written communications quickly and creatively. Join this Webinar to discover the four-stage planning and drafting process that has been successful from classrooms to law offices.
Why Can’t Everyone Just Get Along?
How do you handle inter-employee disputes - not out and out conflict? Maybe it's just personality differences but you know employees have to work together for the good of the firm. They need to act professionally without the rest of the office knowing there may troubled waters between them.
Your Firm’s Risk Insurance Needs: Professional Liability Coverage
Managing your firm’s risk management, including liability coverage and the mechanics of reporting requirements, is intertwined with creating and strengthening your firm’s ethical culture. Knowing the in’s and out’s of your professional liability policies will help you reduce exposure to claims.
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