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Lawyers can now be trained and certified in legal tech

RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers

Published: August 26, 2016

I’m going to tell attorneys how to get trained and certified in basic, and some advanced, legal technology—even though that may eventually render this column moot.

No, it won’t. Too much weirdness in the field to write about. I’ll never run out of material.

But anyway, enter the Legal Technology Core Competencies Certification Coalition, or LTC4 for short. The nonprofit coalition is being publicized by an article in the ABA Journal, to which I would add “about time.”

The fundamental idea behind LTC4 is that clients and potential clients need to know that their attorneys are up-to-date on the technology used in the law office, and the ways in which technology affects the attorney-client interface. Rather than so much creating tech wizards out of attorneys, the coalition seeks to create client confidence in attorneys’ technological competence.

According to the group’s website, the coalition is composed of attorneys and staff who already have certain core competencies, and who are now looking to train other attorneys and support staff.

The groups purpose is to “maintain a set of legal technology core competencies and certifications” that are workflow-based (as opposed to feature-based), offer a positive environment, are flexible and connected to a firm’s best practices and allow for any training or testing method.

Certification is available to either attorneys or staff members, and is broken down into nine core competency areas, each with a separate learning plan. These areas include managing legal documents, e-discovery, collaboration, time and billing, mobile technology, data, reports and exhibits, security, CRM and presentations.

The training seems to be individualized by firm need and will be continually updated.

At present, the training is available only to law firms but the group plans to make it available to in-house counsel and law students.

Membership price is based on firm size, starting at $1,500 and going up to $5,000. There are also memberships available for law schools, nonprofits and vendors.

The group currently has 80-plus members and is looking to grow substantially. You could essentially get in on the ground floor. Go Now! Visit the LTC4 website at http://www.ltc4.org. Do it now. Really. Follow my advice. Do what I tell you to do.


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