There is a story every lawyer of a certain generation tells.
They were sworn in. Someone handed them a file. There was a hearing in an hour. Maybe a deposition the next morning. Maybe a motion to draft with no sample, no explanation, and no clue what the partner actually wanted.
Good luck.
And somehow, they figured it out.
That is not training. That is hazing with letterhead.
For years, law firms confused exposure with education. We believed that if you threw young lawyers into enough difficult situations, they would eventually become lawyers. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they became good lawyers despite us, not because of us. Sometimes they developed bad habits that followed them for decades. Sometimes they left the practice altogether.
The larger firms eventually built academies, boot camps, internal universities, litigation colleges, trial programs, mentoring committees, evaluation systems, and enough binders to fill a conference room. Smaller and medium-sized firms looked at all that and thought, “That sounds great. We have court tomorrow.”
But smaller firms cannot afford not to train their lawyers.
The future of a firm is not its current book of business. It is not its current partners. It is not the cases on the trial calendar. The future of a firm is the young lawyer sitting in the office right now, wondering whether anyone is going to teach her how to practice law.
If you do not train her, someone else will. Or worse, no one will.
The good news is that small and midsize firms do not need a seven-figure professional development budget to create a meaningful training program. They need intention. They need structure. They need repetition. They need accountability. They need partners willing to stop saying, “Nobody trained me,” as if that were an argument rather than an indictment.
Start with the work the firm actually does.
Too many training programs fail because they are built like law school electives. Interesting topics. Smart speakers. Nice PowerPoints. No connection to what associates do on Tuesday morning.
A small firm’s training program should begin with a simple question: What must a lawyer here know how to do to serve our clients well?
If you are a litigation firm, that list probably includes case evaluation, written discovery, document review, deposition preparation, taking and defending depositions, motion practice, hearings, mediation, expert work, trial preparation, client reporting, billing, and professional communication.
If you are a transactional firm, the list is different; if you are a family law firm, it’s different again. Immigration. Bankruptcy. Employment. Insurance defense. Plaintiff’s personal injury. Real estate. The curriculum should follow the work.
Do not begin by asking what a good training program looks like in the abstract. Begin by asking what mistakes young lawyers in your firm keep making. Those mistakes are your syllabus.
If associates write poor emails to clients, train them in client communication. If they do not understand how to prepare for hearings, they should train for hearings. If they cannot take a clean deposition, train for depositions. If their time entries read like ransom notes, train billing. If they do not understand the firm’s business, train them on that too.
Training should solve real problems.
The first part of the program should be an orientation to judgment.
New lawyers do not simply need to know where the printer is, how to enter time, and which conference room has the good camera. They need to understand how the firm thinks.
What does the firm value? What does quality work look like? How do we communicate with clients? How quickly do we respond? When do we pick up the phone? How do we handle mistakes? How do we treat staff? How do we deal with opposing counsel? How do we prepare for court? What does “ready” mean here?
Every firm has a culture. Some fail to explain it.
A young lawyer should not have to reverse engineer the firm’s expectations by disappointing five different partners in five different ways. Put the expectations in writing. Say them out loud. Repeat them often.
The second part should be skills training.
Not theory. Skills.
How to draft an answer. How to prepare discovery responses. How to object without being obnoxious. How to summarize medical records. How to prepare a witness. How to build a deposition outline. How to argue a motion in five minutes. How to write a case evaluation that the client can actually use. How to prepare for mediation. How to think about settlement value. How to close the loop on assignments.
Every skill should be taught the same way: explain, show, do, review, repeat.
Explain the task. Show a good example. Let the associate do it. Review the work carefully. Give specific feedback. Then make the associate do it again.
The magic is not in the lecture. The magic is in the repetition.
A partner cannot say, “You need to write better,” and think that is feedback. That is a fortune cookie. Better feedback sounds like this: “Your facts are strong, but your argument starts too late. Move the best fact into the first paragraph. Shorten the background. Use headings that make the argument for you. Cut the adjectives. The judge does not need outrage. The judge needs a reason to rule for us.”
That is training.
The third part should be shadowing with a purpose.
Young lawyers should attend depositions, hearings, mediations, client calls, expert meetings, and trial preparation sessions. But shadowing alone is not enough. If an associate sits quietly in the back of the room and no one explains what happened, that is not training. That is furniture placement.
Before the event, tell the associate what to watch for. During the event, give them a role. After the event, debrief.
Before a deposition: “Watch how I lock down the timeline before getting into opinions. Watch how I use exhibits. Watch how I avoid arguing with the witness.”
After the deposition: “What worked? What did not? Where did the witness hurt us? What would you ask next time?”
Then, at the next deposition, let the associate handle a small section. Background questions. Document authentication. Employment history. Medical treatment chronology. Something manageable.
That is how confidence is built. Not by speeches. By reps.
The fourth part should be mentoring, but real mentoring.
A mentor is not someone whose name appears on an internal chart. A mentor is someone the associate will actually call before making a bad decision.
Pair people thoughtfully. Common interests help. Common practice areas help. Common backgrounds sometimes help. But the most important thing is trust. A young lawyer needs someone who will answer the awkward questions without making them feel foolish.
How do I tell a partner I made a mistake? How do I deal with a difficult assistant? How do I ask for more work? How do I say I am overwhelmed? How do I prepare for my first argument? How do I know whether I am doing well?
Mentoring should include scheduled meetings, but it cannot be limited to them. The best mentoring happens in hallways, after hearings, before calls, over coffee, and in the five minutes after something went sideways.
Small firms have an advantage here. They are smaller. People know each other. Partners are more accessible. Associates can see how lawyers actually practice. Use that advantage.
The fifth part should teach business development from the start.
Some firms act as if business development is a mysterious art revealed only after a lawyer makes partner. That is a mistake.
Young lawyers should learn from day one that relationships matter. Reputation matters. Responsiveness matters. Writing matters and speaking matters. Bar involvement matters. LinkedIn matters. Following up on matters. Helping others matters.
No one expects a first-year associate to bring in a Fortune 500 client. But that associate can learn how to build a network. She can stay in touch with classmates. She can write short practical pieces. She can attend local bar events. She can speak on small panels. She can treat every person she meets as someone worth knowing, not as a transaction.
Business development is not a switch someone flips in year eight. It is a habit built over time.
The sixth part should include technology and AI.
No modern training program can ignore AI. That does not mean young lawyers should paste confidential client materials into public tools and hope for the best. It means firms need to teach responsible use.
AI can help organize, brainstorm, summarize, outline, compare, and improve drafts. It can also hallucinate, misstate, oversimplify, and create confidentiality problems. The lesson for young lawyers is simple: use tools, but own the work.
Teach them approved platforms. Teach them what not to upload. Teach them how to verify. Teach them that AI is not an authority. Teach them that a fake citation is still their fake citation. Teach them that efficiency without judgment is malpractice waiting for a caption.
The seventh part should be accountability.
Training cannot be something the firm talks about at retreats and ignores during busy season. Someone must own it. There should be a training calendar. There should be written materials. There should be practice checklists. There should be sample motions, sample reports, sample outlines, sample letters, and sample time entries.
Partners should be expected to participate. Associates should be expected to attend. Feedback should be documented. Progress should be discussed.
Keep it simple. Monthly skills sessions. Quarterly workshops. Shadowing requirements. Writing reviews. Deposition labs. Hearing practice. Mentoring lunches. Internal CLEs. Recorded programs for lawyers who miss them — a shared folder of templates and examples.
Small firms do not need bureaucracy. They need consistency.
And they need to stop making perfection the enemy of starting.
You can build the first year of a training program on 12 sessions:
How to receive and complete an assignment.
How to communicate with clients.
How to draft professional emails.
How to write useful research memos.
How to prepare written discovery.
How to review documents.
How to prepare deposition outlines.
How to defend a deposition.
How to argue a motion.
How to evaluate a case.
How to prepare for mediation.
How to build your reputation inside and outside the firm.
That alone would put many firms ahead of where they are now.
The final part is leadership.
Training young lawyers is not charity. It is leadership. It is succession planning. It is client service. It is risk management. It is culture. It is how a firm says, “We are not just using young lawyers. We are building them.”
The partners who complain that associates lack judgment should ask themselves who taught them judgment. The partners who complain that young lawyers cannot write should ask who edits their work. The partners who complain that associates are not loyal should ask whether the firm has invested in them in a way that earns loyalty.
Young lawyers do not need coddling. They need standards. They need coaching. They need opportunities. They need correction. They need someone to tell them the truth and then show them how to improve.
A small firm can do this. A midsize firm can do this. In some ways, they can do it better than anyone because training can be personal, practical, and immediate.
The old model was simple: throw them in the deep end and see who swims.
The better model is also simple: teach them to swim, put them in the water, coach them from the side, and gradually move them into deeper water.
That is how you build lawyers.
That is how you build firms.
And that is how you make sure the next generation does not have to succeed despite us.
Frank Ramos is a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Miami, where he practices commercial litigation, products, and catastrophic personal injury. You can follow him on LinkedIn, where he has about 80,000 followers.
The post Small Firms Can Train Great Lawyers Too appeared first on Above the Law.
There is a story every lawyer of a certain generation tells.
They were sworn in. Someone handed them a file. There was a hearing in an hour. Maybe a deposition the next morning. Maybe a motion to draft with no sample, no explanation, and no clue what the partner actually wanted.
Good luck.
And somehow, they figured it out.
That is not training. That is hazing with letterhead.
For years, law firms confused exposure with education. We believed that if you threw young lawyers into enough difficult situations, they would eventually become lawyers. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they became good lawyers despite us, not because of us. Sometimes they developed bad habits that followed them for decades. Sometimes they left the practice altogether.
The larger firms eventually built academies, boot camps, internal universities, litigation colleges, trial programs, mentoring committees, evaluation systems, and enough binders to fill a conference room. Smaller and medium-sized firms looked at all that and thought, “That sounds great. We have court tomorrow.”
But smaller firms cannot afford not to train their lawyers.
The future of a firm is not its current book of business. It is not its current partners. It is not the cases on the trial calendar. The future of a firm is the young lawyer sitting in the office right now, wondering whether anyone is going to teach her how to practice law.
If you do not train her, someone else will. Or worse, no one will.
The good news is that small and midsize firms do not need a seven-figure professional development budget to create a meaningful training program. They need intention. They need structure. They need repetition. They need accountability. They need partners willing to stop saying, “Nobody trained me,” as if that were an argument rather than an indictment.
Start with the work the firm actually does.
Too many training programs fail because they are built like law school electives. Interesting topics. Smart speakers. Nice PowerPoints. No connection to what associates do on Tuesday morning.
A small firm’s training program should begin with a simple question: What must a lawyer here know how to do to serve our clients well?
If you are a litigation firm, that list probably includes case evaluation, written discovery, document review, deposition preparation, taking and defending depositions, motion practice, hearings, mediation, expert work, trial preparation, client reporting, billing, and professional communication.
If you are a transactional firm, the list is different; if you are a family law firm, it’s different again. Immigration. Bankruptcy. Employment. Insurance defense. Plaintiff’s personal injury. Real estate. The curriculum should follow the work.
Do not begin by asking what a good training program looks like in the abstract. Begin by asking what mistakes young lawyers in your firm keep making. Those mistakes are your syllabus.
If associates write poor emails to clients, train them in client communication. If they do not understand how to prepare for hearings, they should train for hearings. If they cannot take a clean deposition, train for depositions. If their time entries read like ransom notes, train billing. If they do not understand the firm’s business, train them on that too.
Training should solve real problems.
The first part of the program should be an orientation to judgment.
New lawyers do not simply need to know where the printer is, how to enter time, and which conference room has the good camera. They need to understand how the firm thinks.
What does the firm value? What does quality work look like? How do we communicate with clients? How quickly do we respond? When do we pick up the phone? How do we handle mistakes? How do we treat staff? How do we deal with opposing counsel? How do we prepare for court? What does “ready” mean here?
Every firm has a culture. Some fail to explain it.
A young lawyer should not have to reverse engineer the firm’s expectations by disappointing five different partners in five different ways. Put the expectations in writing. Say them out loud. Repeat them often.
The second part should be skills training.
Not theory. Skills.
How to draft an answer. How to prepare discovery responses. How to object without being obnoxious. How to summarize medical records. How to prepare a witness. How to build a deposition outline. How to argue a motion in five minutes. How to write a case evaluation that the client can actually use. How to prepare for mediation. How to think about settlement value. How to close the loop on assignments.
Every skill should be taught the same way: explain, show, do, review, repeat.
Explain the task. Show a good example. Let the associate do it. Review the work carefully. Give specific feedback. Then make the associate do it again.
The magic is not in the lecture. The magic is in the repetition.
A partner cannot say, “You need to write better,” and think that is feedback. That is a fortune cookie. Better feedback sounds like this: “Your facts are strong, but your argument starts too late. Move the best fact into the first paragraph. Shorten the background. Use headings that make the argument for you. Cut the adjectives. The judge does not need outrage. The judge needs a reason to rule for us.”
That is training.
The third part should be shadowing with a purpose.
Young lawyers should attend depositions, hearings, mediations, client calls, expert meetings, and trial preparation sessions. But shadowing alone is not enough. If an associate sits quietly in the back of the room and no one explains what happened, that is not training. That is furniture placement.
Before the event, tell the associate what to watch for. During the event, give them a role. After the event, debrief.
Before a deposition: “Watch how I lock down the timeline before getting into opinions. Watch how I use exhibits. Watch how I avoid arguing with the witness.”
After the deposition: “What worked? What did not? Where did the witness hurt us? What would you ask next time?”
Then, at the next deposition, let the associate handle a small section. Background questions. Document authentication. Employment history. Medical treatment chronology. Something manageable.
That is how confidence is built. Not by speeches. By reps.
The fourth part should be mentoring, but real mentoring.
A mentor is not someone whose name appears on an internal chart. A mentor is someone the associate will actually call before making a bad decision.
Pair people thoughtfully. Common interests help. Common practice areas help. Common backgrounds sometimes help. But the most important thing is trust. A young lawyer needs someone who will answer the awkward questions without making them feel foolish.
How do I tell a partner I made a mistake? How do I deal with a difficult assistant? How do I ask for more work? How do I say I am overwhelmed? How do I prepare for my first argument? How do I know whether I am doing well?
Mentoring should include scheduled meetings, but it cannot be limited to them. The best mentoring happens in hallways, after hearings, before calls, over coffee, and in the five minutes after something went sideways.
Small firms have an advantage here. They are smaller. People know each other. Partners are more accessible. Associates can see how lawyers actually practice. Use that advantage.
The fifth part should teach business development from the start.
Some firms act as if business development is a mysterious art revealed only after a lawyer makes partner. That is a mistake.
Young lawyers should learn from day one that relationships matter. Reputation matters. Responsiveness matters. Writing matters and speaking matters. Bar involvement matters. LinkedIn matters. Following up on matters. Helping others matters.
No one expects a first-year associate to bring in a Fortune 500 client. But that associate can learn how to build a network. She can stay in touch with classmates. She can write short practical pieces. She can attend local bar events. She can speak on small panels. She can treat every person she meets as someone worth knowing, not as a transaction.
Business development is not a switch someone flips in year eight. It is a habit built over time.
The sixth part should include technology and AI.
No modern training program can ignore AI. That does not mean young lawyers should paste confidential client materials into public tools and hope for the best. It means firms need to teach responsible use.
AI can help organize, brainstorm, summarize, outline, compare, and improve drafts. It can also hallucinate, misstate, oversimplify, and create confidentiality problems. The lesson for young lawyers is simple: use tools, but own the work.
Teach them approved platforms. Teach them what not to upload. Teach them how to verify. Teach them that AI is not an authority. Teach them that a fake citation is still their fake citation. Teach them that efficiency without judgment is malpractice waiting for a caption.
The seventh part should be accountability.
Training cannot be something the firm talks about at retreats and ignores during busy season. Someone must own it. There should be a training calendar. There should be written materials. There should be practice checklists. There should be sample motions, sample reports, sample outlines, sample letters, and sample time entries.
Partners should be expected to participate. Associates should be expected to attend. Feedback should be documented. Progress should be discussed.
Keep it simple. Monthly skills sessions. Quarterly workshops. Shadowing requirements. Writing reviews. Deposition labs. Hearing practice. Mentoring lunches. Internal CLEs. Recorded programs for lawyers who miss them — a shared folder of templates and examples.
Small firms do not need bureaucracy. They need consistency.
And they need to stop making perfection the enemy of starting.
You can build the first year of a training program on 12 sessions:
How to receive and complete an assignment.
How to communicate with clients.
How to draft professional emails.
How to write useful research memos.
How to prepare written discovery.
How to review documents.
How to prepare deposition outlines.
How to defend a deposition.
How to argue a motion.
How to evaluate a case.
How to prepare for mediation.
How to build your reputation inside and outside the firm.
That alone would put many firms ahead of where they are now.
The final part is leadership.
Training young lawyers is not charity. It is leadership. It is succession planning. It is client service. It is risk management. It is culture. It is how a firm says, “We are not just using young lawyers. We are building them.”
The partners who complain that associates lack judgment should ask themselves who taught them judgment. The partners who complain that young lawyers cannot write should ask who edits their work. The partners who complain that associates are not loyal should ask whether the firm has invested in them in a way that earns loyalty.
Young lawyers do not need coddling. They need standards. They need coaching. They need opportunities. They need correction. They need someone to tell them the truth and then show them how to improve.
A small firm can do this. A midsize firm can do this. In some ways, they can do it better than anyone because training can be personal, practical, and immediate.
The old model was simple: throw them in the deep end and see who swims.
The better model is also simple: teach them to swim, put them in the water, coach them from the side, and gradually move them into deeper water.
That is how you build lawyers.
That is how you build firms.
And that is how you make sure the next generation does not have to succeed despite us.
Frank Ramos is a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Miami, where he practices commercial litigation, products, and catastrophic personal injury. You can follow him on LinkedIn, where he has about 80,000 followers.
The post Small Firms Can Train Great Lawyers Too appeared first on Above the Law.
