A&L Goodbody is Ireland's premier law firm, having recently been named 'Law Firm of The Year' for the fifth consecutive year at the Who's Who Legal Awards. They have over 350 staff and total headcount of 525. Although their primary office is in Dublin, they are an all-island law firm with offices in Dublin and Belfast, and international offices in London and the USA.
Such accolades make the Firm a popular choice for law students seeking traineeships, a prerequisite in Ireland for those who want to become solicitors.
The solicitor application and assessment process is detailed and involves a number of key stakeholders in the Firm. Previously, each applicant applied by submitting a handwritten Application Form downloaded in PDF format from the Firm's website. The information was then collated manually by an administration team and distributed to the stakeholders for review and interview selection. This process became increasingly cumbersome and time consuming as the number of applicants increased. A more efficient process was required.
A&L Goodbody investigated an online solution in 2007 in order to streamline the recruitment process and cut down on administrative work. Hazel Mullan, Assistant Director of Training and the e-learning project manager at the Firm, had previous experience with Moodle while studying for her Masters in Training & Education Management in Dublin City University and working as a lecturer. Hazel had already successfully piloted Moodle as a Learning Management System within the Firm and thought it might be a good option for the recruitment process, given its extensive functionality.
"We looked at a number of off-the-shelf commercial packages", commented Hazel Mullan, "However we were attracted to Moodle as we could heavily customize it to suit our specific requirements. The fact that we could maintain control of the software and manage the site ourselves proved very attractive".
The solution was a customized version of existing activities within Moodle, namely the questionnaire, quiz, and reporting modules. A&L wanted potential trainees to initially fill out personal details in the questionnaire module. From there they would be directed to a Moodle quiz to test key competencies via an online assessment and then back to the questionnaire to complete and submit the form. The administration team had specific reporting requirements for selection and assessment purposes.
"We were able to extrapolate information from Moodle via an excel spreadsheet which significantly simplified the backend processing work. A printed or e-mailed version of each Application Form could be passed around for review—a significant improvement on its handwritten predecessor!" commented Mullan.
A&L Goodbody was one of the first law firms in Ireland to have their online Application Form up and running in 2008.
Key development work included removing all the navigation options from the site. This locked down the site and steered applicants, 'with a heavy hand' through the application process to completion while removing any possibility of browsing within the site. The main objective was to make the completion of the Application Form a seamless process between the Moodle activities and the user login profile. The site was also branded using the Firm's logo. Enovation worked with A&L to achieve this.
The uniqueness, and in some ways, complexity of the project meant that A&L were keen to engage with a service partner that had extensive knowledge of Moodle to enable them to bring the project to a successful completion. Enovation not only had the Moodle knowledge and experience that A&L were looking for, but also a proven reputation in the legal sector with their long term customer, The Law Society of Ireland.
Selection of a suitable solution should be based on defined needs; both immediate and long term. The Firm chose Moodle for a number of reasons:
- The previous success of Moodle as a learning management system within the Firm.
- It was easy to customize. It could accommodate the Firm's specific requirements: commercial off-the-shelf solutions allowed much less flexibility and control.
- It is easy to use. Through her knowledge of Moodle, Hazel was confident that applicants and those processing the Application Forms would find it easy to use and navigate.
- From a cost benefit point of view it was the best option for the Firm.
- Applicants had more control of the process. They could log in and out, completing their Application Form in different sections until they were happy to submit it.
- It enabled the integration of an online assessment as part of the Application process.
- It provides excellent backend processing facilities and reporting features.
- Law students are already familiar with the software as it was used in universities in Ireland and the Law Society of Ireland.
A&L Goodbody successfully piloted the application process with a number of existing trainees in early 2008 and, based on positive feedback, officially launched the system in September 2008.
Hazel continued: "Moodle has proved to be a very effective solution for a very important process. Applying for a traineeship is a daunting and intense process for applicants and we wanted to provide them with a user-friendly online experience which not only improved the process, but gave applicants more control over the process. Using Moodle involved some degree of risk as it hadn't been used for this purpose before but it worked and it has been a resounding success."
The value of e-learning, including A&L Goodbody's use of Moodle, has been recognized with the following nominations and awards:
- A&L were nominated for the 'Best Commercial Initiative Under 1000 Employees' in the 2009 UK Training Journal Awards for ALG e-learning
- A&L Learning & Development won an 'outstanding achievement' award at the IITD National Training Awards for the second year in a row 2008 and 2009
- A&L e-learning receives 'highly recommended' commendation for the IITD Pearse Walsh Award 2009
- A&L e-learning won second place in the Managing Partner Forum Awards: 'Best use of Technology' 2008
A&L Goodbody's online Application Form site hosts several different types of Application Forms seamlessly and the application process is completely automated and streamlined:
- The administration time associated with the recruitment process has been greatly reduced.
- Applicants now experience a much more user-friendly and cutting edge application process.
- The reporting features, such as those on the Moodle quiz, give key stakeholders a breadth of information which benefits the selection process and was previously unavailable.
- Applicants can print submitted Application Forms from their own computers for their records. An HTML editing box allows applicants to edit their applications (for example, Spell check) before submitting them.
- Completed applications can be e-mailed between stakeholders.
- The administration team can produce crucial reports from every data field in the system for the purposes of mail merges and trainee application follow ups.