Eversheds Sutherland is a global top 10 law practice. It provides legal advice and solutions to an international client base which includes some of the world’s largest multinationals. It provides the full range of legal services including corporate and M&A, dispute resolution and litigation, energy and infrastructure, human capital and labour law, insurance and financial services, intellectual property, real estate and construction, and tax.

The Challenge

When embarking on a firmwide project to roll out iManage Work 10, Eversheds Sutherland engaged iTrain Legal to plan, implement and support the rollout. The project was a complex one, spanning nine months and involving the training of over 4,000 people in four languages, across 31 offices and six time zones around the world.

The Strategy

Working closely with the firm’s iManage Programme team, the implementation project was broken down into four key phases:

Phase One - Pre-Implementation Services

In order to get a clear understanding of the extent of the project, iTrain met with the firm’s senior stakeholders; this consultancy period was key for the development of a detailed project map and communications plan. The rollout was planned in tiers, with local ‘change champions’ set to receive training prior to other colleagues.

Phase Two - Resource Creation Services

The second phase of the project involved the creation of over 100 generic guides and videos, 30 customised guides and 10 customised videos. This was supported by an eLearning package, which iTrain Legal customised specifically to Eversheds Sutherland’s iManage configuration and business processes. They also implemented useiManage, a subscription training solution which included 15 generic courses and 15 certification exams. Due to the international nature of the firm, 10 of the core quick reference guides were supplied in French and German, as well as English.

Phase Three – Instructor-Led Training Services

A staggered rollout was planned, with different regions and countries set to receive training at different times in alignment with local platform implementation. In each instance, the following services were provided:

• Change Champion training
• Train-the-Trainer training
• User Acceptance Testing training
• End User training (in English, French and German)

Training sessions were translated into French, German and Arabic for colleagues across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and recorded for future playback.

Phase Four - Post-implementation Services

The firm’s people were supported at every stage of their migration to the new document management system, with online drop-in clinics, workshops and one-to-one sessions provided in local time zones. Mop-up sessions were also run, to assist people who had missed any of the previous training sessions. These were delivered remotely via Zoom with support available across all of the different time zones.

The Results

The project was delivered on time and on budget. Training was well attended – consistently seeing over 85% attendance across the different regions.

Feedback from the business has been very positive:

“I had iManage champion training yesterday. Your trainer was clear and easy to listen to, she was calm and was happy to go over any queries. Such a likeable lovely person.”

“Just want to let you know that the drop-in sessions are very helpful and you should use them if you have trouble. I had a very specific question this morning, clicked on the zoom link and Hanneke answered my questions right away. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be available given the time difference but the clinic is staffed during our working hours. If you have a question, please try it because it’s really efficient. iManage team, thanks for making this available, and thank you Hanneke for your helpful response!”

“The training has been amazing and has really prepared us.”

“iTrain really did understand what we were trying to achieve. They had all the tools and detail to support and help us build our training and technical requirements throughout. They were involved in all elements of the programme which helped us to build and move forward and a lot of the material and templates that were already available made our jobs easier and tasks quicker to deal with. Fact finding/information at the perfect level.”

“The daily emails were fantastic and took a lot of pressure off the programme team. Really informative for those deployed to. Sent within the time zones. Consistent throughout the whole deployment. Also added and removed colleagues who last minute moved to other deployments or who had returned from leave. Emails got more people to attend. We used those emails to share training. Invaluable service.”

“The team at iTrain are experts at providing support and guidance throughout the whole transformation journey. They ensure the essential information is effectively cascaded through their team members. This resulted in all of our people having the same training experience regardless of where they were in the world. The team worked closely with all facets of the iManage programme and quickly became part of the core delivery team.” - Quote from Sue Chick, Digital Transformation Manager