Your Online Learning Hub

ALA continually works to enhance its education offerings. For the last several years, we’ve offered e-learning courses, webinars, webcasts and recordings. These same opportunities will continue, but we are rebranding them to be more in line with the continuing education industry.

Web-Based Courses

Formerly referred to as the eLearning Center, our web-based offerings include courses available through the internet using an interactive platform. It presents the latest content based on two of ALA’s popular topic areas and is set in a framework that combines a live instructor with self-directed learning. These include:

• Six-week instructor-led online courses in human resources and financial management.
• Classes meet live each week for an hour. Content is then available on-demand.
• HR1 and HR2 or FM1 and FM2 completion provides the option to earn a Legal Management Specialist Certificate in the respective area.

Here are the web-based courses for 2020:

E-Learning Opportunities

ALA will also be offering e-learning opportunities through an online learning management system (LMS). The content is delivered via text and graphics, animation, audio and video, quizzes, surveys and games. It presents the latest content on any topic set in a framework of self-directed/self-paced instruction.

E-learning can help learners complete education and training objectives with greater ease and flexibility than they can with traditional classroom-based or web-based learning. When learning materials are online, users are able to access content from anywhere and at any time using desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones and tablets.

We will start with three modules for the LFME (Law Firm Management Essentials) e-learning:

• Leadership
• Human Resources
• Legal Industry

Coming soon:

• Operations Management
• Financial Management

LFME: Leadership

Legal management professionals are faced with leadership challenges every day. You manage up and down the reporting line — managing partners and executive committees on the up, staff on the down — in an industry that is being reshaped by economic pressures and technology. Though it is sometimes a difficult position to be in, it also means that you — and those around you — benefit when you improve your leadership skills. Research shows that skills most valuable in today's leaders include self-awareness, adaptability and collaboration.

Objectives:

• Explain levels of leadership, management and ways you can work with others most effectively.
• Recognize Goleman's leadership styles and emotional intelligence elements.
• Apply knowledge of self to improve relationships and business outcomes in the law firm you manage.

Register today!

LFME: Human Resources

Managing human resources in a law firm is a complex and dynamic task. As administrators and managers of the business of law, we have to ensure we have the right people on the team, and that team is engaged and focused on delivering superior service to our clients. The skilled administrator must understand the goals of the firm, while navigating the legal landscape of local and federal laws as they apply to employment and benefits. From hiring to separation, administrators will walk away with the tools they need to make their firm successful and their attorneys and staff effective and engaged. 

Objectives: 

• Recognize what federal and local laws apply to your firm. 
• Discuss relevant policies to have in each firm handbook. 
• Identify user performance management as a tool to deliver effective results to stakeholders. 
• Recognize the effect of strategic benefits for your firm. 
• Define how human resources strategy fits into the firm strategy. 
• Design your HR department from the ground up.   

Register today!

LFME: Legal Industry

As administrators and managers of the business of law, we must ensure that we have knowledge of current trends in the legal industry and learn how external factors affect us and our firms. Learning the importance of staying current on legal trends and using them in our firm’s strategic plans will help us develop strategies to improve our law firm’s performance and help make them “Dynamic Law Firms.”

The amount of data our firms create, review and store grows exponentially each year. How we manage and secure that data is paramount to staying competitive in the legal industry. When we have gained the knowledge that we need to better manage our firms, we must share it with our firms and our peers. We must also work to implement changes that will keep our firms dynamic and moving forward in our ever-changing industry.

Objectives: 

• Identify current law firm trends and determine their impact on your position or firm. 
• Learn how current legal trends can help your organization become more efficient, productive and competitive in today’s global market.
• Recognize the importance of legal trends in your firm’s strategic planning for the future.
• Identify the characteristic of a “Dynamic Law Firm” and determine if our law firms are one.
• Develop strategies to improve our law firm’s performance to help make it dynamic.
• Recognize the importance of managing the ever-increasing amount of data created and stored in law firms.
• Define ways of protecting the firm’s data and the data that is stored for the firm’s clients and opposing parties.
• Identify tools available to law firms that will assist in managing, protecting and organizing the firm’s data.  

Register today!

Additional Online Learning Opportunities

Additional Resources

Get the tools you need through the Resource Hub.