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.

Change Leadership: A Boot Camp to Drive Organizational Change (CM)
Leaders today recognize the imperative to change –only a small handful have the right tools and techniques to create effective change within their teams and organizations. Join this Webinar to discover how to apply critical change leadership concepts and tools. Through assessment tools, case studies, questions and participation we will learn how to embed the learning and ensure skill development with this critical leadership skill.

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.

Dealing with Substance Abuse in the Workplace (HR)
How do you know if a lawyer is impaired? What does an administrator do when the odor of alcohol is detected on the job? Can staff report suspected impairment without fear of retaliation? Review the conditions that cause impairment, myths surrounding them and how they manifest in the workplace with specific behavioral indicators.

Document, Document, Document! (HR) HRCI
We've said it to our attorneys and managers too many times to count: "Have you documented it?" Far too often, the answer is "no." As we know, proper documentation is crucial for a myriad of employee relations issues. But it's not enough simply to document, document, document. Poor documentation is as dangerous as no documentation. The key is not only what is written, but also how and when it is delivered.

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.

Employee Handbooks For Law Firms – Careful, Careful! (HR)
We don’t need no stinking handbook! Yes . . . we do. In today’s litigious environment, employee handbooks are essential for all employers. Join this session to discuss the important dos and don’ts in drafting a handbook for your law firm without creating employee contracts.

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.

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.

Initiating Alternative Fee Arrangements (FM)
It's hard to get the details on how structure alternative fees - even how to clearly identify the firm's own cost for doing the client's work. Join this Webinar for practice tips and strategies about understanding your firm's economics and translating that knowledge into better client service.

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.

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.

Marketing (Mis)Alignment: Closing the Gap Between Marketing and Law Firm Leadership (LI)
Join this Webinar to learn the results of a joint research between members of the Association of Legal Administrates and the Legal Marketing Association. Gain fresh perspectives on marketing and business development that will shed new light on how to improve your firm's performance.

Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
A challenging economy and client pressures have highlighted the importance of marketing and business development efforts for every law firm. This practical session will focus on how your firm can employ a range of cost-effective strategies to gain exposure, differentiate itself, and generate new business.

Mentoring: It's Déjà Vu All Over Again (HR) HRCI
Mentoring has always played a prominent role in the legal profession because, for lawyers, mentors do more than simply pass on knowledge and information. They pass on the true art and science of the practice of law. Effective mentoring programs are therefore critical to any lawyer's professional development and for sustained success in law firm management.

MS^® Office Tips & Tricks for Law Firms (OM)
Take the Microsoft Office Suite to the next level of productivity! Learn advanced tips and tricks for Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, including how to share, edit and simultaneously review files with others across geographies and times zones. Get an overview of what law firms are using Access for and applications for OneNote and the entire Office suite.

Of Foxes, Hedgehogs and Law Firm Profitability (FM)
While reducing costs can stave off disaster, it rarely leads to being a leader. Join this program to explore ways to use an economic challenge as an opportunity for future success.

Profitable Law Firms - There's no APP for That
There is no "silver bullet APP" to make our firms profitable, but there are many principles and ideas that we can embrace for our firms to become stronger and more viable. Join this session to identify applications and opportunities and gain insight on how to implement changes to create a more profitable law firm.

Records Management
The right steps are essential to successfully implement a firm-wide paper and electronic records management program. Consider how to plan the program, manage the project, and more. Learn some of the key components of migrating your physical records to e-records and how to deal with the management of documents, records, e-mail and risk management policies.

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.

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.

Technology Management: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (OM)
Managing technology is a challenge in every law office. In this session, we will cover a wide variety of topics related to technology, including:

• Technology Audits: Is your firm a candidate for an Audit?
• Technology Plans: How to create and manage them
• Technology Investments: How to Obtain Return on Investment
• Technology Tips and Tricks

The Art of Active Listening (CM)
Listening makes up more than half of the communication process, and to be successful you must know what to listen for. Learn to manage upset people, and improve cooperation and understanding in your workplace simply through improving your own active listening skills.

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 Role of Legal Administrators in Legal Project Management – Unprecedented Opportunities & Current Challenges (CM)
In most law firms, lawyers – and legal administrators – know how to manage a case. Legal Project Management (LPM) is becoming an essential tool in today’s economically challenging legal landscape – a tool that can, among other things, help you estimate how long different tasks should take based on historical benchmarks and then calculate a combined time estimate for the entire case.

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.