The Connected Lawyer

Leveraging Technology to Practice Law More Effectively

Category Archives: CLE

Thinking of Hanging Out Your Own Shingle? Please Join Us.

I am honored to have been asked to present for the Illinois State Bar Association at a seminar called Hanging Out Your Shingle (Without Hanging Yourself). The program will be presented at the Northern Illinois Conference Center at 8500 East State St., Rockford, Illinois on Friday, March 27, 2009.

I will be speaking on setting up your operations, with a concentration on computers and other equipment. My program is described as:

Establishing a 21st century law practice raises a variety of technology issues that every private practitioner must consider in their efforts to provide efficient and competent legal services. In this segment, the speaker will provide tips on acquiring office equipment, purchasing a computer system, filing electronically, conducting a mobile practice, and handling phone calls 24/7.

I gave a similar presentation last June and enjoyed myself. I am looking forward to this one as well.

The program is geared for new solo or small firm lawyers and, in addition to my subject, will also cover topics such as Getting and keeping good clients; Treating your law firm like a business; Setting up your office space; and Billing, fees, and collections.

If you are a new solo or small firm attorney, I urge you to check out the program and join us on March 27 for a great program.

A Great CLE Idea

I love what the people at Mentor CLE are doing. They make their presentations available for free on the Internet. If you want credit for them you simply pay $19.95 per hour.

Recently they added their newest product, a daily three minute audio report on recent developments in the law. You can choose to receive the daily reports via email or cell phone. Alternatively, you can simply listen to them on your computer.

The email I received announcing this service stated:

A convenient new type of MCLE course is now available for Illinois lawyers.

The MentorCLE Daily Briefing is a three-minute audio report on recent developments in the law – delivered to your computer or cell phone each day.

By listening to the reports, you earn one hour of Illinois approved MCLE credit each month, which adds up to 24 hours each two-year reporting period. If you can’t listen some days, you can always go back and listen later. We even offer a weekend wrap-up of all of the week’s reports, for those attorneys who would prefer to listen once a week rather than daily.

I think the model that Mentor CLE has adopted is great. It allows you to listen to presentations for educational purposes and/or credit purposes. The new feature with the daily briefing is simply an additional benefit that will allow you to fulfill much of your CLE requirements both easily and inexpensively.
I would like to see the service offer the both the daily updates and the video presentations as downloads to be viewed or listened to on a portable device. Additionally, the daily updates would be perfect for delivery as a podcast via RSS.

Regardless, if you are an Illinois attorney, I urge you to check out the offerings from Mentor CLE.

ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference Starts Today

ISBA Solo Small Firm 2008I don’t know what your plans for today are, but I am headed to the ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. I will be speaking at two sessions. Today I am speaking with Nerino Petro on online applications and Software as a Service (SaaS). On Saturday, I am again speaking with Nerino, Todd Flaming, and Adam Nelson and we are presenting 60 tips in 60 minutes.

If are you attending the conference stop by and say hi. if you are not planning on attending, you should. I have attended every year and learned something every year. It is a great opportunity to meet people and get some MCLE credits at the same time.

Time to Register for 2008 ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference

I just received the registration brochure for the 2008 ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. This is shaping up to be another great conference and I am really looking forward to it. There are three programing tracks with lots of good programs and speakers scheduled. I urge you to attend if at all possible.

If you register before July 15, you can take advantage of the early bird discount.

You can find out more information about the conference here. You can download the registration brochure here.

2008 ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference

ISBA Solo Small Firm 2008Early Bird Registration is now open for the 2008 ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. I was on the planning committee for this event and I believe that this will be another great conference. As with previous years, the conference will have three tracks to choose from: Substantive Law, Effective & Ethical Practice, and Legal Technology.

On the Legal Technology track, we are offering sessions on digital dictation, online applications (including Software as a Service), tech for tightwads, and developing a paperless office. We will also have sessions on ediscovery in small litigations and using Adobe Acrobat for more than creating a PDF.

Once again, the technology track will include nationally known speakers such as Ross Kodner, Nerino Petro, Rick Borstein, Catherine Sanders Reach, and Todd Flaming.

The conference will be September 4-6, 2008, at the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, Illinois.

Check out the website, and take advantage of the early bird discount by registering now.

An Interview With Lee Goodman of MentorCLE

MentorCLE A new CLE provider for Illinois has recently hit the internet: MentorCLE. MentorCLE has a unique approach in that, they allow you to view the CLE presentation before you pay for it. If you wish to obtain CLE credit for it, you then pay MentorCLE a fee ($19.95 per credit hour) for the course. If you don’t want or need the CLE credit, then you need not pay them anything.

I recently conducted an email interview with Lee Goodman, the guy behind MentorCLE. I think he has put together a really interesting idea with MentorCLE and I am curious to see how things work out. I encourage you to check out their site and their CLE offerings, especially if your deadline is fast approaching.

What is MentorCLE and how does it work?

www.MentorCLE.com provides Illinois MCLE Board approved continuing legal education courses as online streaming videos. Lawyers can watch the courses for free. If they want MCLE credit, they pay $19.95 per credit hour. Attorneys can buy as many or as few of their required 20 hours of credit as they want (including professionalism/ethics courses), without having to buy a subscription. An official certificate of completion is emailed automatically when an attorney registers and pays for a course by credit card.

Aren’t you afraid of giving your information away for free?

Not at all. I love that we are able to let people watch our courses for free. I enthusiastically support the Internet ethic of voluntarily sharing programs and information, and I believe there should be as few barriers to education as possible. If a lawyer wants to learn how to be a better lawyer, I’m glad to help. We happen to be at a point where access to high-speed Internet is so pervasive, and technology is so inexpensive and reliable, that we can do this. It wouldn’t have been possible just a couple of years ago.

How do you find your instructors?

I’ve been an attorney in this state for nearly thirty years, so I know a lot of good lawyers. The challenge is to find experts in their fields who are also good on camera, and so far we have succeeded. Of course, we are always looking for new instructors, so there is a form on our website where people can tell us what courses they want to view and suggest themselves or someone else to present the courses.

We use an interview format for most of our courses, which makes it a lot easier on the presenters. They don’t have to memorize an hour-long presentation and they don’t have to be skilled teleprompter readers. The format is also a lot more interesting for people who view the courses than what most other online providers do, which is to point a camera at someone who is at a lectern and let the tape run for an hour. That’s a format that is almost impossible to watch on a computer screen without falling asleep.

Are you accredited as a CLE provider in any other state? Are you considering expanding to become accredited in other states?

We are concentrating on Illinois lawyers for now. Some topics that are exclusively federal law can be useful across state lines, but a lot of what most lawyers really want and need to know is state-specific, or has to take into account state and local conditions. All of our courses are presented by Illinois instructors. This is one of the advantages we have over some out-of-state online providers that are trying to peddle courses that were produced in places like New York or California.

At some point in the future we may move into other markets, but only when we have courses that will be useful to lawyers in those other states.

How long have you been operating?

We went live in January, 2008. The first deadline for Illinois lawyers to get their MCLE credits is June 30, 2008, for lawyers whose names begin with A through M. N through Z lawyers have until June 30, 2009 to get their credits. We will be adding more courses each year.

What has been the response thus far?

We have been getting feedback, and it is universally positive. People tell us they like our low price, and they like the convenience of getting their courses on the Internet. They tell us our website is very easy to use, and they like the interview format. Almost everyone who buys one course from use comes back and buys more courses, which tells us they are satisfied with our service. And people are already telling their friends about us.

We had to make a lot of decisions as we put MentorCLE together. Because Illinois lawyers have never had to take CLE courses before, we weren’t sure whether what we came up with would be well received. So far it looks like we did it right. Of course, I’ve been putting CLE courses together for bar associations for years, so it wasn’t all guesswork. I had a pretty good idea of what lawyers wanted.

Have you thought about releasing some of your presentations as podcasts that people can listen to while driving, exercising, etc. without having to watch them?

We may add podcasts, but so far we haven’t had much demand for them. Almost all lawyers have computers, but very few use portable video-capable devices. And download times for videos to get them onto portable devices are still pretty long. If we find in the future that more lawyers are asking for this, we’ll probably add it. The same goes for audio-programming.

We have worked very hard to provide our courses in a way that is easy and convenient for lawyers to access, but we start with the fact that most lawyers are only familiar with live, in-person seminars. So we are trying to introduce online CLE in a way that will be accepted. What we know from the experience of other states, and other professions, is that online courses will very quickly become the most popular way to get CLE. We are excited to be among the first, and most innovative, providers, and we intend to keep providing courses in formats that lawyers want.

I Am Off . . .

ISBA Solo and Small FirmI am off to the The 3rd Annual ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference at Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, Illinois. If you were thinking about attending but had not yet made up your mind, it’s not too late. Onsite registration begins at 11 am on Thursday, Sept. 5.
Join the more than 300 people and 52 speakers who have committed to attending this conference. It is a great opportunity to learn a few things, pick up some CLE credit, and meet some new people.

I look forward to seeing you there.

ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference Starts in One Week

ISBA Solo and Small FirmThe 3rd Annual ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference starts next week on September 6. For the last two years, this conference was really good. I expect this year’s conference to be just as good.

The conference has three tracks of programming: 21st Century Law, Effective & Ethical Practice, and Substantive Law. This is a great opportunity to pick up some information (and MCLE credit) at a very reasonable price.

I hope to see you there.