ID Case File #7 - The Pro Bono Problem
September 1, 2025
The Dilemma
Elena Garcia, the HR Manager at Legal Equity Advocates for Families (LEAF), a non-profit law firm, has a project she’s been trying to get off the ground for the past two years. LEAF provides pro bono legal support for families facing housing crises, like landlord disputes over unsafe living conditions. They are a critical stepping stone for new law school graduates, offering them their first real-world legal experience before they move on to larger firms.
This model, while noble, has created a persistent performance problem. New associates, fresh from academia, struggle to apply their knowledge. They have difficulty reading and understanding complex legal briefs, are slow to grasp LEAF’s internal processes, and often feel unprepared for their first courtroom appearances. The result has been unnecessary case delays that directly impact the vulnerable families they serve.
Currently, onboarding is an informal, ad-hoc process where senior staff train new hires in person or over Zoom. This creates a significant bottleneck, drains the time of experienced lawyers, and leads to inconsistent training. While the content of this informal training is generally good, it isn’t sticking. The real issue is the cost of these growing pains.
Elena has finally convinced LEAF’s leadership to explore hiring an instructional designer. They've given her the green light to get quotes, but they are laser-focused on the cost-benefit analysis. As a donor-funded organization, every dollar spent on a new, formal onboarding program is a dollar they have to justify to their board and supporters. The current "training" doesn't appear as a line item in the budget, so any new investment will be heavily scrutinized.
Elena needs help in articulating the full impact of the current situation (the hidden costs and missed opportunities) to justify the investment in a real solution.
"They see the staff's training time as 'free,' but it's not. Every hour a senior attorney spends hand-holding a new hire is an hour they're not closing a case for a family in need. Cases are getting delayed, mistakes are being made, and our new hires are burning out before they even really get going. I need to show leadership that the cost of not doing this is far greater than the cost of building a better onboarding program."
To build the case, I reframed the problem by focusing on the full impact of this inefficiency. I considered both the hard financial costs as well as the critical, mission-driven opportunity costs. These included quantifiable costs: from the lost productivity of senior attorneys acting as ad-hoc trainers, to the direct risk that case delays pose to their grant funding and the high price of constant employee turnover. I also highlighted the qualitative impacts: the reputational damage caused by errors and, most critically, the profound human cost to the families they serve when a case is delayed. This transformed a simple 'training request' into a powerful business case.
Because LEAF's leadership is hyper-focused on a justifiable, budget-conscious investment, I had the team scope out three potential solutions at different investment levels. Each solution would be effective, to a degree:
Solution A: The Pilot Project.
A single, targeted online module on "Reading and Analyzing a Legal Brief." It's a low-cost, quick win designed to prove the ROI and set leadership up to get quantifiable data for further investment in the future.
Solution B: The Holistic Onboarding Program.
A complete, self-paced online curriculum covering all core knowledge. This formalizes and standardizes their entire training process and frees up the senior staff to focus on their core mission of legal advocacy.
Solution C: The Performance Ecosystem.
A comprehensive solution that includes the full onboarding program from Solution B, but adds an "Associate Support Hub" (via Teams/Slack) for social learning, allowing new hires to ask questions of peers and senior staff in a dedicated, searchable channel. We would also build a library of just-in-time performance tools (checklists, templates) for associates to use on the job and a microlearning program that uses spaced repetition to make sure the learning sticks.
Let’s be clear, Solution C is the right answer, and I’m not just saying that to squeeze the most money out of them. They have a complex problem with several factors: the initial training, on-the-job support, and the cultural isolation. However, because they’re so risk-averse and budget-conscious, which do you think is the more strategic path?
The Decision
For a risk-averse non-profit, is it better to provide tiered options for different budgets or go all-in with the single best solution?
Select an option above or scroll down to view the debrief.
The Debrief
This case demonstrates how a learning designer acts as a strategic consultant, shifting a client's perspective from a simple "training request" to a high-stakes "business case." The ability to articulate the full, often hidden, impact of a performance problem is essential for getting buy-in and defining the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will prove the project's value.
Your first and most critical move was to reframe the problem. Elena came to you asking for a quote on an onboarding program; you helped her build a business case that proved the cost of inaction was far greater than the cost of any solution you could propose. This is the core of a successful Project Discovery phase.
By conducting a thorough Needs Assessment, you moved beyond the surface-level symptoms (e.g., "new hires are slow") to uncover the deep, systemic impacts. You critically analyzed the situation and challenged assumptions, even if it meant guiding the organization towards a path different from their initial request.
Creating a Business Case
A key part of this process is conducting an impact analysis to understand the problem's true consequences. The analysis in this case built a powerful argument by articulating three types of costs:
Quantifiable Costs:
These are the direct financial drains on the organization, which create a compelling argument for the project's Return on Investment (ROI). ROI is the financial benefit an organization gets from a project when compared to the amount invested. In this case, the analysis included:
Reduced Billable/Pro Bono Hours: Estimating the hours senior staff spend on informal training and the daily tax of double-checking work, revealing a significant cost of lost productivity.
Increased Case Timelines: Analyzing data to show how delays caused by inexperience lead to longer case cycles, which can impact grant funding and donor satisfaction.
High Employee Turnover: Connecting the stressful onboarding to LEAF’s high turnover rate and estimating the costs of recruitment, hiring, and lost institutional knowledge.
Direct Cost of Errors: Identifying the real money spent on court refiling fees, legal service costs, and potential court sanctions for procedural errors.
Qualitative Impacts:
These are the critical but less tangible costs that affect the organization's health and mission. This speaks directly to the Return on Expectations (ROE), which assesses if a program met stakeholder expectations beyond just financial metrics. This included:
Impact on Clients: Highlighting the human cost when a delayed case means a family endures prolonged exposure to unsafe conditions.
Decreased Employee Morale: The stress on both new hires who feel unsupported and senior staff who feel overburdened contributes to a negative work environment.
Inconsistent Quality of Service: The ad-hoc model creates an internal equity problem where a client's outcome could be negatively impacted by which associate they are assigned.
Future Implications:
Beyond immediate costs, the analysis must also consider the cascading, long-term consequences of inaction. For LEAF, this included:
Reputational Risk: Delayed cases and errors can damage LEAF’s reputation with donors, the courts, and the community.
Damage to Employer Brand: A "sink or swim" reputation shrinks the applicant pool over time, diminishing the quality of incoming talent and making the entire performance problem worse.
Connecting the Business Case to Evaluation
Stating the potential ROI isn't enough; you need to show leadership how you will measure it. One of the most common frameworks for this is Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation. While all levels are important, proving the business case relies heavily on Level 4: Results, which measures the training's contribution to broader organizational goals. The KPIs identified during your impact analysis (case timelines, turnover rates, grant compliance) become the metrics you will track at Level 4 to demonstrate the tangible value of the training program to the board and donors.
However, for a non-profit, not all value can be captured by financial metrics. This is why it's also important to consider Kaufman's fifth level, which focuses on Return on Expectations (ROE). This level assesses whether the learning program met the unique expectations of its stakeholders, which is critical for an organization where mission impact is a primary driver. For LEAF, ROE would be measured by gathering feedback from senior staff, new hires, and even clients to determine if the new system made them feel more supported, confident, and better able to serve the community, regardless of the direct financial return.
Creating a business case early on in the project discovery sets you up for success because it forces you to define the desired results and how you'll measure them before the project even begins. This process is a practical application of Backward Design, where you start with the end in mind. By identifying the KPIs for success from the outset, you ensure that every design decision is purposefully aligned with achieving those specific, measurable outcomes, making the final project evaluation a more straightforward and meaningful process.
Delivering a Strategic Proposal
The two decision paths in this case represent a classic consulting dilemma that centers on Managing Stakeholder Expectations: do you offer flexibility to secure an initial win, or do you advocate for the comprehensive solution you know is right?
A Tiered Proposal is a strategic move to manage risk for a cost-conscious client. You present the Pilot, the Holistic Program, and the full Performance Ecosystem as a phased roadmap, giving leadership maximum control over their investment. This approach is an effective way of tailoring your message to a stakeholder group that is concerned about budget, showing that you are listening to their needs.
The inherent risk, however, is that you are giving them the option to choose an incomplete solution. By presenting the medium- and full-scale approaches alongside the pilot, you are leaving it up to the client's spending appetite to decide if the systemic problem actually gets solved. You are trusting them to see the value in the full investment, rather than settling for a partial fix that only solves a fraction of the problem you've outlined.
To pitch only the full solution is a higher-risk strategy that is grounded in your role as a trusted advisor. It requires you to confidently advocate for the comprehensive solution you know is right, even if it's not the easiest sell.
To make this pitch effectively, you have to tell a compelling story that brings the impact of the problem to life, using the powerful ROI and ROE data you've pulled together to create a sense of urgency. By presenting only The Performance Ecosystem, you are making a confident case that a piecemeal approach would be a wasted investment, especially given the uncertainty of future non-profit funding. This aligns with the principle that a learning designer's goal is to create learning solutions that drive real results, not just check a box.
The risk is that the high price tag could cause "sticker shock," but it's a risk taken to advocate for what's truly best for the organization.
The Bottom Line
It’s important to recognize that the Tiered Proposal is not necessarily the "wrong" answer. A core consulting skill is adapting your project plan and negotiating based on the client's reality. Presenting a rigid, all-or-nothing proposal to a highly risk-averse leadership team could cause them to walk away entirely, wasting the two years of effort Elena invested in bringing them to the table.
Sometimes, the most strategic move is to secure a foothold, solve part of the problem well, and build trust for a future engagement. A pilot program can be a valuable technique to get buy-in for a project. By successfully delivering a smaller, high-impact solution, you create internal champions and generate the hard data needed to advocate for a more complete solution down the road. The key is managing stakeholder expectations with total transparency, making it clear that the pilot is a first step on a longer roadmap and will not solve the entire systemic issue on its own.
Ultimately, a consultant must be able to "read the room." If you sense that the sticker shock from the full ecosystem is too strong, being flexible enough to pivot to a more phased approach is not a failure; it's a sign of an experienced and adaptable partner. It's a trade-off between the perfect solution and the possible one. In some cases, getting a partial, effective solution in place is better than having a perfect proposal that gets rejected, leaving the client with no solution at all.
Community Insights
This section summarizes real-world feedback from instructional design practitioners polled on LinkedIn, Reddit, and other professional forums such as ONILP and Useful Stuff. We've highlighted their poll results, insightful comments, and alternative strategies to showcase diverse approaches to the dilemma.
Summary of Results
An overwhelming 87% majority recommended Present a Tiered Proposal, with comments stressing that flexibility, risk management, and incremental buy-in are vital when working with a new nonprofit client.
The main consensus is that starting small builds trust, offers an opportunity to pilot and prove value, and sets the stage for expanding into the full ecosystem later; making pragmatic progress without overcommitting resources upfront.
Featured Comments
I might add one more just-in-time learning tool: a chatbot programmed with examples of the kinds of real-world problems new lawyers encounter in translating academic knowledge to the field and how they can be successfully addressed, plus overarching insights into how to effectively approach these kinds of situations. New employees can query the chatbot to get input on how to handle cases they are working on. That way you can take the insights of the more experienced lawyers in programming the chatbot so new employees still get their wisdom, but the experienced lawyers have their time freed up.
That being said, I do think there is something to be said for actual human interaction, and there should probably still be opportunities for junior-senior connection built in somehow (maybe once a week lunches pairing a senior and junior member).
- Başla Andolsun
ID & Co-Founder of ndgenius
www.ndgenius.com
Lawyers love using precedent! A successful pilot will likely get you more long-term support for option 3 than going to option 3 at the start.
- Laurie Bluem, MBA
Learning Designer & Talent Strategist
lauriebluem.com
LinkedIn Profile
Definitely the tiered proposal. The biggest factor here is the concern of risk and cost. C is the right answer, yes, but it is the least likely to be approved. There is no relationship between the ID and the non-profit yet. Trust has not been fully established, so any proposal will be met with some skepticism and doubt while the ID justifies the need for an overhaul to their current system. (I know you mentioned the needs analysis in the brief, but that is not a guarantee to immediately get the nonprofit to agree to implement change without any form of pushback). Thus, they would likely want the cheapest available option (option A) and focus on immediate solutions over holistic ones.
I would pitch the tiers and recommend tier C outright to focus on solving the problem and help the nonprofit feel they have more control. Perhaps to encourage the clients to pick tier C, I could provide a discount to tier C if they pick A or B and later decide to expand? It might encourage the nonprofit to go for C because A or B combined with C would be more expensive than going with C outright. The issue is that this is a risky gamble which might undervalue my own work and establish a precedent I do not necessarily want when it comes to pricing for future clients.
- Erica Kauffman
Instructional Designer
Present a Tiered Proposal: It's critical at this venture to present flexibility and expertise. The Tiered Proposal smartly offers option A, which would be the first course of the many courses offered in the curriculum in Option B. And Option B would be the backbone upon which all the support services offered in Option C are built off of. So presenting that allows the risk averse organization to start small before going big.
However, it's also important to state to the decision-maker, ‘I know the correct answer is the full shebang. I just don't know that you know that.’
- Provokyo
Instructional Designer (Healthcare)
Before presenting solution/s, I'd want to ensure they're fully cognisant of the costs. Both direct and indirect. How much time do the experienced people spend onboarding the n00bs? What is their average hourly rate? Why are noobs leaving? What is their average tenure? What are the costs in onboarding them across the organisation? Why do short tenure's leave, why have the longer tenured people remained? Does that reinforce what you mentioned?
Then you can identify some hypotheticals - for example: what if we can reduce staff turnover by 10/20/30%? And allocate specific $$$ savings in each example... whilst making some recommendations around what might be realistic. So before recommending a solution/spend, you need to highlight the specific costs (both financial and organisational) of doing nothing. From there, you've a solid base to recommend investment.
- Cory Smith
Capability Development Professional
LinkedIn Profile
