Continuing professional development is now mandatory for lawyers in most states. In a time-poor profession, is online CPD the way of the future?

Technology often advances faster than the user's capacity to adapt to it. Thus lies the crux of the question with online CPD (or MCLE, as it is known in NSW): the online service exists, but will people use it?

Natalie Wieland, CEO of CPD Interactive says that the online space is very new. "In fact, it was only last year that we received the green light to make an online offering and since then it's been a process of educating the market about the benefits of online CPD."  And heading up those benefits is something which is at a premium for every lawyer: time. "Lawyers love online CPD because they can do it anytime, and in small segments if they choose - so they can do a whole module in one go, or in ten-minute blocks if that fits better into their schedule. Our online courses are also popular with women who are working part-time, and not always able to get to a conventional seminar on the allotted day."

Stereotypes dictate that the younger generation will usually be first to adopt new technology, but this has not been the experience of CPD Interactive. "Actually, it's the senior lawyers who have led the move online, because they're always so time poor," says Wieland. "I'd say that 70% of our clients are at the level of senior associate and above. Junior lawyers see great value in conferences and seminars as a way of networking."

The other benefit of online CPD is that, rather than the lawyer keeping a personal log of their CPD activity, records are automatically kept by the software. The choice of online services varies according to the user. "The bigger firms have a very targeted approach as to which modules they choose so that they can integrate them into their programs, whereas individuals might participate as they see fit," says Wieland.

Nicola Atkinson, national manager of learning and development at Blake Dawson, says that she can see a potential for online learning in situations where lawyers are located offshore and unable to attend conferences, or where legal skills can be learned through simulation programs. "However, for the immediate future, we don't see it as the main method of learning," she says.

Blake Dawson divides its learning program into two streams - specialist and firm-wide. The specialist program places emphasis on learning through discussion and sharing of knowledge and offers what is referred to as "matter based CLE". "That's where we have one of our partners talking about a recent transaction or task they've been doing and explaining the lessons they've taken out of that work. A lot of the learning is about the judgment calls which need to be made in a particular situation, which is quite difficult to teach online." 

A number of in-house counsel from the firm's clients also attend these sessions. "Many companies have professional development programs, but not always with a legal focus, so quite often we'll provide that training to clients," says Atkinson.  

The firm-wide training includes topics such as tax basics and advanced contracts, and Atkinson says that it is in these kinds of areas where online learning might be appropriate. Not that the firm particularly needs to source its CLE externally, "we want to draw on the expertise of the cutting edge lawyers we have in the firm, and we're not going to find that elsewhere," says Atkinson.

McCullough Robertson is another firm which prefers to do its training in-house, "we think it's important to tailor the learning to our firm, rather than have training in the abstract," says partner Malcolm McBratney. "For example, we'd want to adapt the training to reflect our own people and processes and software, and you can't do that if you use an external provider."

Margaret Jolly, director of  people and performance at  McCullough Robertson, says that there may be a place for online training for niche learning areas or for remotely located lawyers, but says that she cannot see the online model replacing the firm's current face-to-face, firm-specific CPD program.

"The interesting thing is that if you send lawyers on a course which is relevant to their practice and the firm, they come back energised and motivated, whereas if the training is at a more generic level, they often return disappointed," she says. ALB

CPD: State by state breakdown

As states progressively adopt mandatory CPD requirements, there is an outward appearance of an emerging uniform system: but how uniform is it in reality? Not uniform enough, according to the National CPD Task Force, a body which is promoting harmonisation of schemes. The Task Force commissioned  Streeton Consulting Pty Ltd to create a comparison table which demonstrates the variations between schemes. A simplified extract of this table, current as at September 2008, appears below: