Group One Case Study: Hogan & Hartson, LLP

The largest law firm in Washington, DC, Hogan & Hartson, LLP has over 800 attorneys in 18 cities around the world. The firm's practice is divided into more than 30 groups covering the areas of business and finance, litigation, and government and regulation. In late January of 2001, the managing partner of the firm delivered a 'State of the Firm' address in which he stated that over 43% of the firm's attorneys reside in domestic and international offices beyond Washington, DC. He also announced that further expansion of the firm is planned within the next five years.

In response to these announcements, complaints from attorneys, and escalating training costs (travel, etc.), key staff from the Information Systems Training Department met to discuss how they could better meet the needs of attorneys outside of the Washington, DC office. While it was agreed that face-to-face training was valuable and should continue to be offered for certain courses, it was determined that implementing an e-Learning solution would address four goals: 1) meet the training needs of attorneys beyond the main office; 2) meet the training needs of time-strapped attorneys within the main office; 3) help the firm towards its goal of developing technology-savvy attorneys; and 4) serve to move the firm in the direction of Knowledge Management.

The training staff drew up a proposal and presented it to the Executive Committee. The approved plan is as follows:

• General Project Description:
  The Information Systems (IS) Training Department determined that beginner, intermediate, and advanced on-line courses will be made available for the Standard suite of Microsoft Office software, including Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, and Explorer, as well as for MS Access, MS Project, and MS Visio. These courses will be purchased from an external vendor and will be made available to all 800 attorneys, free of charge. An additional six courses will be developed in-house. No audio or video will be incorporated into these courses, but they will allow for asynchronous conferencing, both peer-to-peer and moderated. Finally, it was decided that the in-house Reference Materials collection, documenting topics from general computer help to Microsoft Office tips and techniques, should also be made available via the e-Learning platform. The external vendor will provide similar documentation for each of the Microsoft applications, but 26 other documents, averaging 2.5 pages in length, must be edited, and converted from MS Word to XML.
• Technology Needs/Licensing Fees:
  To acquire the 24 courses from the external vendor, H&H has agreed to pay a yearly license fee. This fee has been contracted at $45.00 per client. In addition to these fees, H&H has determined that it will need to purchase an e-Learning platform and a primary and backup server. The e-Learning platform is expected to cost $30,000, while the necessary servers will cost $6,000
• Human Resource Needs:
  The human resource needs of the project can be divided into three categories: development, delivery, and maintenance.
  • Development:
    To develop the 6 courses in-house, H&H will need to acquire the services of a contracted instructional designer at $525/day. This instructional designer will work in partnership with an H&H training staff member, whose annual salary is $46,500. An on-staff web programmer, whose salary is $73,150, will convert the documents to XML.
  • Delivery:
    Another H&H trainer will be assigned the responsibility of moderating the conferences for each of the courses. Because attorneys' time is money, it is not expected that there will be a great deal of participation in the conferences. It is planned, therefore, that the trainer will only spend about 10% of her time answering learners' questions. The trainer's salary is $50,000/yr.
  • Maintenance:
    Every two years the courses will be updated by the web programmer, in parallel with upgrades to newer versions of each of the applications. Every four years, H&H plans to re-evaluate the existing courses offered and redesign them in light of new technologies. An H&H trainer, the contracted instructional designer, and the web programmer will each participate in this process. Other technical maintenance will also be necessary. It is expected as well that a staff member of the Information Systems Networking Department will need to spend approximately 8% of their time updating the e-Learning platform software and performing backups and other regular maintenance. The IT staff member's salary will approximate $45,000/yr.
• Learner Salary Costs:
  While there are firm incentives for the attorneys to participate in the on-line courses, it is anticipated that of the 800 attorneys, only 650 will actually participate in a course. We estimate that 10% of attorneys will take all three levels of each course; 20% will take two levels of each course; and 70% will take only one level of each course. The IS Training Department has determined that on average, each attorney will take 11 courses. The average attorney salary at H&H is approximately $400,000. However, to adequately determine the costs to the attorneys of taking these courses, costs must be examined in light of billing rates. At an hourly average rate of $250.00, the average annual salary approximates $520,000.

Many overhead costs, such as those associated with building maintenance and accommodations, general office supplies, Internet access, and desktop computer maintenance expenses, will not be applied when costing this project. The organization applies these costs to an overall administration budget and does not allocate them on a departmental basis. See attached spreadsheet for further costing.