Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary, Blackbaud
Search every verified Jon Olson interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Jon Olson, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Blackbaud, discussed the implementation of Procertas legal tech training within his department in a September 2019 testimonial. Olson stated that he oversees all legal and real estate functions at Blackbaud, where he has worked since 2008. He described his department as "very document intensive," handling contracts, mergers and acquisitions, and commercial transactions, and noted that his team of nine attorneys are heavy users of Microsoft Word and Excel. Olson said he introduced Procertas after learning about it from Joe Colucci, initially considering it for law firms before deciding to use it internally. He noted that the diagnostic tests revealed "meaningful gaps" in his team's software proficiency, and that after training, "every single person found that there was something to be learned and benefited from it." Olson described the training as a "tremendous time-saving benefit" that helped create "greater efficiency" and avoid mistakes such as "miss numbered or missed referenced" items. He characterized Procertas as "head and shoulders above anyone else" in providing training geared toward the legal industry.
“I am in charge of all the legal function within Blackbaud as well as all the real estate function. I learned about Procertas probably about four years ago from Joe Colucci and he thought that it would be a very valuable tool for the law department.”
“In our law department we do a lot of drafting and a lot of negotiation of contracts and we're heavy users of software solutions such as Microsoft Word and Excel, so there's a tremendous value for people to be very proficient and adapted then.”
“No one ever gets training on those [software tools]; there's no training as far as I'm aware that comes with the software itself, and then on top of that I can guarantee there's no training on those sort of technologies from law school.”
“The diagnostic test was very eye-opening because even people who thought they were very adept at those technologies found out they had meaningful gaps and then went through the training modules and I think every single person found that there was something to be learned and benefited from it.”
“From a solution perspective it's an excellent solution. Every single person in the department who used it found they learned some kernel, some more than others of course, but everybody found something that made their day easier and just a little less frustrating to use those software applications.”
“I found it to be a tremendous time-saving benefit. It's not an expensive proposition so it certainly wasn't money or budget in this case, as with so many things in today's world it was finding the time for my team to take the time out of their day which is usually pretty booked and pretty busy as it is to focus on some...”
“The biggest issue I think for us was creating greater efficiency. We're very document intensive in the law department as you might imagine, documents from mergers and acquisitions, documents from commercial transactions.”
“We probably put more written output than any other department in the company other than perhaps marketing. In terms of documents that are heavily dependent on understanding how the word processing system is used, it's definitely the law department.”
“The shortcuts and the hacks and the little tricks just the general training that LTA provides allows us to just be more efficient with our time and be more accurate.”
“We are primarily the only organization that I know that's doing this at all. I suspect there are some other organizations that do some embryonic training for Word and Excel and Adobe but none of them are geared towards the needs of law departments, law firms and legal industry, so in that respect they're head and shoul...”
“I am in charge of all the legal function within Blackbaud as well as all the real estate function. I learned about Procertas probably about four years ago from Joe Colucci and he thought that it would be a very valuable tool for the law department.”
“In our law department we do a lot of drafting and a lot of negotiation of contracts and we're heavy users of software solutions such as Microsoft Word and Excel, so there's a tremendous value for people to be very proficient and adapted to them.”
“No one ever gets training on those [software tools]; there's no training as far as I'm aware that comes with the software itself, and then on top of that, I can guarantee you there's no training on those sort of technologies from law school.”
“The diagnostic test was very eye-opening because even people who thought they were very adept at those technologies found out they had meaningful gaps and then went through the training modules and I think every single person found that there was something to be learned and benefited from it.”
“From a solution perspective it's an excellent solution. Every single person in the department who used it found they learned some kernel, some more than others of course, but everybody found something that made their day easier and just a little less frustrating to use those software applications.”
Sign in to search the full transcript archive, filter by topic, and access every quote from Jon Olson.
The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →