At 200-lawyer Arnall Golden Gregory, a professional development function run largely by one person had to move on several priorities at once: firm-wide AI readiness, first-year associate onboarding, and a partner mentoring program.

When Thompson Coburn set out to expand attorney professional development, the firm didn't build a program all at once. It started with 25 SkillBurst Professional Essentials modules in 2019 and grew, one need at a time.

Partnership includes a member discount on ACEDS certification, training and membership, joint educational programming at ILTA conferences, and a new eDiscovery conference launching in April 2027.

The acquisition expands BARBRI's AI and skills learning portfolio with Lega's proven, experiential AI learning model, giving law students, lawyers, and law firms a practical path to AI fluency and professional development

Report also offers a path for Learning & Development (L&D), Knowledge Management (KM), and Innovation teams to work together to bridge those gaps

There's no shortage of harassment prevention training in the marketplace. But the more firms I talked with, the clearer it became: they weren't looking for another course. They were looking for one their people would engage with. 

Pivoting towards a tech-centric training methodology offers a myriad of undeniable benefits.

On-demand training can be an efficient and cost-effective way of meeting recurring compliance training requirements - if the training is effective and is more than a check-the-box exercise. What should you look for in on-demand training? Here are 12 questions to consider to choose the solution that’s right for you.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a future consideration for the legal profession. It is already changing how lawyers work, how firms deliver services, and how organizations develop talent. Recently, legal education leaders, law firm professionals, and in-house counsel gathered for a discussion focused on a critical question: How do we prepare the next generation of legal professionals to lead in an AI-driven world?

One question keeps surfacing in our conversations with firms: “Do you have anything for developing managers?” 

Sometimes the request is broad. Sometimes it's specific: “We have lawyers stepping into management for the first time. They know the legal work. They've never really been taught how to coach someone, delegate effectively, or give feedback that actually helps someone improve.”

The conversation starts in a lot of different places. Sometimes it’s a PD director who has a recurring live training that’s eating her team’s time and needs to scale. Sometimes it’s a COO looking at the budget for a new associate class and asking whether there’s a more efficient way to deliver onboarding.

This article is the second in a series on how associate development is changing — and what law firms need to build deliberately to replace what the environment used to provide by accident. The series examines the readiness gap from multiple angles: the business case for addressing it, the distinction between legal training and professional effectiveness, and the organizational dynamics that determine whether new associates thrive or stall.

The gaps that hold new associates back in their first year are well-documented at this point. They’re rarely about intelligence or legal knowledge. They’re about situational judgment: how to communicate proactively, how to manage competing demands, how to raise a concern with a senior partner, how to navigate the political dynamics of a large organization without a roadmap.

Individual AI use among legal professionals has more than doubled in a single year, with nearly 70% now reporting they use generative AI tools for work — up from 31% the prior year, according to the 8am 2026 Legal Industry Report. But here’s what that headline obscures: more than half of respondents report their firm has provided no training on the responsible use of AI and has no plans to do so. 

If you’ve ever sat through an eLearning module that made you want to close your laptop and take up a different career, you know what I’m talking about. Monotone narration reading bullet points off a screen. Stock photos of people in blazers pointing at whiteboards. Quizzes where you can fail three times and still get credit. A “next” button that advances slides no human being should have to read. 

This article is the third in a series on how associate development is changing — and what law firms need to build deliberately to replace what the environment used to provide by accident. The series examines the readiness gap from multiple angles: the business case for addressing it, the distinction between legal training and professional effectiveness, and the organizational dynamics that determine whether new associates thrive or stall.

Every law firm partner knows this feeling. A new associate is smart, motivated, legally well-prepared — and yet something isn’t quite working. The work is technically adequate, but the communication misses. The instincts aren’t there. The judgment calls that should be intuitive are somehow elusive. No single failure you can point to. Just a persistent, low-grade sense that something is off.

In this interview, we share thoughts from Tara Waters, a former technologist, law firm partner, and Chief Digital Officer who has a strong reputation and track record in legal innovation and digital transformation, enhanced by her background working in both the technology and legal industries.