Hotshot is a video-based learning platform that helps lawyers succeed and makes law firm training better. Hotshot offers over 250 courses on corporate, litigation, and business topics that are used as on-demand practice resources and as part of an organization’s virtual, live, and hybrid training programs.
Watch the product demo video associated with this interview at the bottom of the article.
Background
Ian Nelson, the President and Co-Founder of Hotshot, was a corporate and M&A lawyer at Kramer Levin in New York for about 7 years.
During his time working as a lawyer he had two experiences that were instrumental to his founder journey. When he started practice as a first-year associate, he was put on a triangular merger and told by a partner to “go look at the diligence and point out if anything looks weird.” Ian says that he had no idea what to do - law school had not prepared him for this kind of work.
Later in his career as an associate, Ian was sent to the United Kingdom for some months to work for a firm called Berwin Leighton Paisner. On his first day in the office he was introduced to the professional support lawyers (PSLs) who were centralized in their own area. He had never before heard of the concept of a PSL and was blown away by the notion of legal professionals who spent their time making sure that all the practicing lawyers had the most up-to-date forms and templates available to use.
When he got back to the United States, Ian was full of ideas and fired up about the PSL model and the concept of know-how, which was effectively providing real training to lawyers every day. He eventually left practice and joined Practical Law (PLC), where he met his co-founder Chris Wedgeworth and started working full-time on legal know-how and practice efficiency.
In the meantime, the landscape of law changed with clients pushing back on paying for things like legal training, and outside of law, online learning platforms were emerging.
Ian and Chris recognized the opportunity to build something that would help with legal training and education, and bring modern learning models to the industry. That’s where Hotshot was born.
What Problem Does Hotshot Solve?
Originally, Hotshot was created to help solve the problem of a knowledge gap – law school wasn’t preparing students for actual practice, and law firms weren’t always teaching the sorts of things that lawyers needed to know, so associates didn’t have the resources that they wanted or needed.
Ian and Chris looked outside of legal to companies like Duolingo and YouTube and saw the concept of digital, just-in-time learning and decided to introduce this to the legal industry.
Over time, Hotshot has evolved to address multiple training use cases. During the pandemic, remote learning became critical, and Hotshot is now being used in over half of the AmLaw 100 firms.
What are the Use Cases, and how are you seeing Hotshot being used?
There are a number of key use cases for Hotshot:
- Supporting just-in-time learning – an associate is at their desk, they’re asked to do an interrogatory, an expert deposition, or to review a materiality scrape provision. If this is the first time they’ve been asked to do a certain type of work, they can use Hotshot to easily access and watch a five minute video that quicky gets them up to speed so they can get the work done.
- Hotshot has now become a formal part of law firm training programs. Law firms that already have a first year training program, for example, are now frequently assigning Hotshot videos as part of the curriculum. Hotshot has evolved so that along with videos it also supplies firms with hypotheticals and learning guides that allow a firm's professional development team to run blended learning and classroom sessions, which means they don’t have to prepare all of these materials themselves.
- The Hotshot founders have now worked with the ABA to develop a mechanism whereby short videos on a particular topic can be strung together into a longer piece of learning. When a lawyers has watched all of the videos in that topic area and reached an hour of training, they get their CLE credit.
- Hotshot now also has a real presence in law schools, with law professors using Hotshot as part of their curriculum to add a more practical element to their classes – for example, they may run a bootcamp on corporate closings and then hold a virtual closing with their class.
- Law students also use Hotshot individually to prepare for interviews, for example to learn what is actually involved in M&A practice.
What is the Target Demographic for Hotshot?
Lawyers at all levels use Hotshot. Over time, Hotshot has built out learning tracks – summer associate training, learning tracks for corporate or litigation, mid-level tracks, and more advanced tracks. The idea of self-directed learning means that lawyers at many levels of seniority can gain value from Hotshot.
Hotshot is used by lawyers at law firms, professional development teams at law firms, by law school professors, law students, and even by solo lawyers who can take out individual subscriptions to the platform.
What is the core value proposition that makes Hotshot different from its competitors?
Ian says that what really sets Hotshot apart is the time, care, and attention that is put into the content. A new topic is only launched after substantial customer discovery. The content is approached holistically and then developed with a high production quality in an engaging video format. Topics are updated regularly and maintained with fresh materials.
Fundamentally, there aren’t many companies that cover the actual practical skills needed for lawyering, especially through short, on-demand training videos.
Hotshot understands that no one is better placed to train new law firm associates than a firm’s lawyers. Hotshot does not seek to replace a law firm’s training. But there is a level of information that is generic to any firm – a closing is a closing, depositions are depositions. Hotshot prepares the content that it makes no sense for firms to prepare, so that the time partners spend on training is where they can add real value – by sharing their own war stories, for example, and explaining how this work is done specifically at their particular firm. In other words, Hotshot helps firms take their training to the next level so they can focus on what is unique to their firms. Ian calls this Blue Apron for legal training – Hotshot gives you the ingredients, but you do the cooking.
