Litigation
May 31, 2001
Technology Lets Assessments Provide Meaningful Answers
Doctors Hector Torres, Jay Slosar and Richard Lettieri, three clinical psychologists working from their company in Irvine, are in the forefront in using technology to help fashion legal solutions. These psychologists compose and conduct assessments (sophisticated surveys with relatively high reliability), through which essential information is gathered to fashion legal solutions.
Doctors Hector Torres, Jay Slosar and Richard Lettieri, three clinical psychologists working from their company in Irvine, are in the forefront in using technology to help fashion legal solutions. These psychologists compose and conduct assessments (sophisticated surveys with relatively high reliability), through which essential information is gathered to fashion legal solutions.
Combining their work with the Internet, the psychologists have made it possible for people to participate in assessments conveniently, confidentially, candidly and cost-effectively. As well as ubiquitously and continuously.
The psychologists' work will soon affect decisions by judges, elected officials, attorneys, arbiters, advocates, paralegals and legal staff, whether they are working on police misconduct, harassment, discrimination, safety or group morale and whether the police, military or civilians are involved.
Cases in California (the Los Angeles Police Department misconduct case), Washington state (the Microsoft discrimination case), Michigan (the Ford harassment case) and Georgia (the Coca-Cola discrimination case) might be the first to be affected.
The direct results of implementing these assessments may include: a solution, at one-tenth the cost of punitive damages, that will do more good at solving the problem that gave rise to the damages; a much better line of communication between civilians and law enforcement, which will help an independent monitor keep vigil; and a permanent, cost-effective system that can be put in place by an oversight committee to ensure that, after the committee's sunset, there is not a recurrence of a massive problem.
So how do assessments figure into a legal solution? How do assessments keep problems from arising in the first place?
First, assessments can be used to ensure quality training and retraining of employees and management. How important is this? Ford has pledged $20 million-plus for training in its case, and Coca-Cola has pledged an even larger sum. Are the companies getting the best result for their massive expenditures?
Probably not, because the training as now conducted does not normally include the psychologists' "three R's," which directly and significantly determine the effectiveness of training.
• Reception. Is there hostility toward training? Is there preference for a particular type of training? In either case, learning is affected.
• Retention. How long do employees and managers remember what they have learned? Can learning be reinforced without a major retraining program?
• Realization. Will what has been learned be implemented or is there resentment? Is perhaps the feasibility of implementation at issue? If employees think that a recommendation is stupid, they will resist implementation: Shouldn't management immediately know that? Might there be an alternative that has been overlooked?
Second, assessments can be used to improve internal communications - for example, communications between officers and command staff in the LAPD. Assessments can foster candor. The independent monitor and other parties in interest, like the city council committee with jurisdiction and the police union, can obtain access to information essential to reform without invasion of anybody's privacy. Technology makes it possible to gather and quantify meaningful answers quickly without pointing fingers, without singling out an individual.
One might ask how issues can be addressed without names being named. There are at least three ways:
• Memoranda. Command staff can let everyone know that there is an issue and that resolution of that issue is a priority, lest action be taken against violators; this lets a violator know that his behavior is unacceptable without his possibly being surprised and becoming resentful.
• Training. After assessments with the "three R's," command staff quickly can implement customized instruction.
• Increased oversight. Command staff can put captains and watch commanders on alert to watch for indications of a problem or assign more supervisory staff.
Importantly, this does not imply that direct accusations and formal complaints have no role. Rather, this enables more officers more quickly to participate in reform with the least adverse effect on morale or productivity.
The assessments provide a needed intermediate option between no action by officers and the action of a formal complaint. Reform will be aided because officers will use the intermediate option without the reluctance associated with a formal complaint. The assessments can even allow officers to suggest solutions.
Third, assessments can be used for feedback from the recipients of products or services: civilians vis-à-vis law enforcement, customers vis-à-vis companies. (One should be careful not to equate an assessment with a customer survey. There can be a qualitative difference.)
The first step in moving toward a good relationship is to understand what others are thinking. There has to be candid two-way communication. Technology can facilitate two-way communication.
If, as an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit more than a year ago maintained, the public was intimidated by the process for filing formal complaints against the LAPD, then, yes, we certainly can do better. The psychologists' assessments could be adapted for public use. The public would use such an intermediate option more frequently than a formal complaint.
One should not conclude from the above that the psychologists' assessments are a tool just for independent monitors and company managers. A labor union can use assessments before beginning contract negotiations. A military unit can use assessments before and after deployment in a foreign country. Either side in the yet-to-be-decided Microsoft discrimination case can buttress its position through the noninvasive use of assessments as part of discovery, with perhaps better effect than depositions. Even sole practitioners with individual clients can use assessments.
Van Ajemian is an attorney in Montebello who works with the three clinical psychologists mentioned in the article.
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