The case of Blackberry & Co Law Firm
The case of Blackberry & Co Law Firm
Blackberry & Co is a law firm that was established in 2003 by James Blackberry (Owner and Partner). The firm comprises of three partners, several senior associates, associates and many trainee and paralegal staff. The law firm specialises in civil, criminal and commercial areas of law practice. They pride themselves on providing high quality legal services in an effective, efficient and timely manner to all clients. The firm is based in Melbourne, hire 150+ full time staff and are organised into core divisions to reflect their law specialisations. There are separate divisions such as HR that assist with the running of the business. Within the HR division, there is a designated training, learning and career development team referred to as SEED (Skills Enhancement and Employee Development).
Alice is part of the SEED team as a coordinator whose primary focus is on the new graduates that join the law firm as part of their graduate program. Her role is to design, develop, deliver learning and development activities and monitor the need for ongoing learning and development as required by the new employees in the graduate program.
Blackberry & Co currently have an orientation program and a comprehensive graduate program designed for the new graduates to learn all parts of the firm and support the graduates to get started on developing their experience with real life legal cases. The graduate program involves:
a learning and development program
a mentoring program
weekly scheduled catch ups with the other new graduates
social networking events such as lunch with the partners at the law firm and semi-regular Friday meet and greet evening drinks.
The graduate program is a 2-year program that involves four rotations of six months each across several of the law practice areas to give each graduate the opportunity to gain diverse experience and consider potential career paths.
End of Case Study
Question 1. Alice is keen to review the learning activities within the graduate training program and turns to you as a HRD student to get advice on motivational theories. To assist Alice, outline two implications of each motivational theory (reinforcement theory, goal setting theory, need theory and expectancy theory) for adult learning design using specific examples relevant to the context of the case. (500 words).Question 2. Alice has recently been informed that due to budget cuts, some of the funding allocated to the graduate program is being significantly reduced. This news is quite alarming. Alice hears that the budget cuts to the program are likely because too many of the new graduates are not accepting offers of full-time employment at the law firm. In the past, the graduate program has been successful with several of the Associates and Senior Associates who started in the graduate program have worked their way up the organisational hierarchy. In response to hearing the graduate program funding cuts, you decide to formally email James. In your email, justify the value of HRD, followed by describing the strategic role of HRD within and for the firm. (500 words).
Question 3. With a sizeable intake of new graduates in the graduate program each year, there are always new employees at the firm. Alice has received feedback and has observed that some teams are not working well together and not collaborating as well as they should be to assist their clients needs. Draw on your organisational development knowledge to identify one implementation intervention that could be implemented to address Alices concern. Explain how it could be implemented, justify why it should be implemented and then outline two intended benefits for the employees. (500 words).
Question 4. Alice decides to review the training programs and identifies in the problem-solving training program that the assessment is not effectively measuring skills development. Using examples, explain how Alice can implement the three categories of assessment in the training program for the new graduates. Next explain how and why it is important to have constructive alignment between the training program learning outcome, learning strategy and assessment. (500 words).
