Measuring Performance and Improving Workshop Evaluations

Legal Services NYC (LSNYC) was established in 1967 to fight poverty and seek racial, social, and economic justice for low-income New Yorkers. As part of its mission, LSNYC’s Learning Center offers legal education workshops to attorneys, paralegals, and LSNYC staff. The Learning Center is the largest poverty law education program in the country. LSNYC engaged a Capstone team to assess and enhance the Learning Center’s current performance measurement and workshop evaluation system. The team conducted interviews with staff members to identify LSNYC’s desired outcomes and held focus groups with workshop participants. The team combined this data with a literature review of best practices for educational program evaluation and a study of similar organizations in the field of legal education. They proposed a new digitized evaluation form and process, as well as recommendations for implementation.