To deliver training that is comprehensive, relevant and engaging, IT directors face significant challenges. Not least that law firm employees are very busy, in particular their fee earners.  

Ideally, there should be two elements: IT training, which provides employees with skills that they can apply immediately to their work, and IT education that facilitates better knowledge and understanding. But we do not live in an ideal world. 

For lawyers and their support staff, the clients always come first; they work very hard to deliver on their behalf. Even if IT training should help support that delivery process, it often becomes subordinated, something of secondary rather than primary importance.

We have training for everything, including how to open an envelope 

The rapid pace of technological change in systems and software only serves to compound the difficulty in sufficient time and energy being devoted to the task.  

Stuart Whittle, IT operations director at Weightmans, has "a lot of sympathy with lawyers because the software is just too complex". As a former lawyer himself, he understands both sides.  

"This isn't an original quote, but it does resonate: making software complex is easy, but making software easy is complex."

IT training certainly polarises opinion, producing some contradictory findings.

The Legal Week Best Technology Survey, which canvasses the views of fee-earners and support staff at top law firms, finds lawyers generally have a high regard for the training offered by their firms, particularly for the use of new systems, with 77% of the belief that it is effective, set against only 9% who do not.

Similar satisfaction levels exist for training in data/information security (73% vs 8%) and software updates (67% vs 11%). Notably less well regarded are training for working remotely (53% vs 11%) and collaborative working (38% vs 8%). 

The real substance behind this data – which is compiled from more than 2,000 survey responses – rests in the comments made by respondents. And there are plenty. "We have training for everything, including how to open an envelope," quips one.  

Making software complex is easy, but making software easy is complex

Although the data suggests that there are many who feel satisfied with the training they have, apart from the sporadic 'excellent' and 'very good', few respondents express their satisfaction in more elaborate words of praise. 

Perhaps inevitably, those who feel most motivated to respond at greater length are the malcontents, as evidenced by the following comments:

"Our IT team concentrates on what they want to tell us, instead of what we want to know."

"We are not educated on new IT software in the market."

"The service desk needs more training than the fee earners."

There is even a request for "language courses – the IT department appears to speak a completely different language from me". 

Beneath the sarcasm lies a more serious message in communication: the expectation is that a monologue of acronyms, terminology and techspeak is universally understood and embraced, when in reality it is not. 

One respondent suggests: "All new staff should be given a good grounding in all software packages, this is not done at all."

Another adds: "When learning about new systems, we really need a great deal of help immediately if a lot of time is not to be wasted, and a huge amount of frustration and irritation generated." One thing is clear: many respondents express a desire for more training. The word "more" appears very frequently. 

And therein lies the paradox. The frustrated desire for more training across the board is not reflected by the data, which instead presents a picture of reluctance: a significant number of respondents want to have their cake and eat it too. 

The responses to the question, "How often would you be willing to attend IT training sessions?" are, to put it mildly, disappointing. Thirty-seven per cent of respondents would be willing to attend face-to-face classroom training either "irregularly" or "never". 

An even higher figure of 41% was given for face-to-face training that was one-to-one. Computer-based training such as webinars, fared no better at 37%, while 'train the trainer' (training by peers) did worst of all at 45%. 

Remarkably, in all formats of training, only a minority of respondents are prepared to commit to regular training. 

This is an edited extract of the 2015 Legal Week Best Legal Technology Report, which is published this week and analyses the results of Legal Week Intelligence's annual technology satisfaction survey. The report canvasses the views of 2,152 fee-earners and business support staff on IT satisfaction at top law firms in 38 different areas including hardware and systems, IT support, training, security and business optimisation processes.

For further details and to purchase a copy of the report, please email [email protected] or call her on +44 (0)20 7316 9864.

• The Legal Week Strategic Technology Forum 2016 will take place from 15-17 June at the Ritz-Carlton Penha Longa, Portugal. For further details email [email protected].