New Orleans Lawyer Meetup Group - Off to a good start

Last Wednesday  we had the inaugural gathering of the New Orleans Lawyer Meetup Group, which is going to be an informal gathering of lawyers who are new to the profession or new to the city. We welcome others who can help those new lawyers get started. So, obviously, we had some more experienced lawyers who can serve as mentors, providing useful advice or just plain old encouragement. And we had some folks who aren't lawyers, such as accountants, web-designers, tech-savvy folks etc. 

Technology plays a big part in helping lawyers practice law, so that's probably going to be a core part of the group. But, overall the goal is to make the meetings fun and informative in a casual way. We plan to meet once a month, probably on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Members of the group will automatically qualify for a 10% discount on any of the CLE seminars my PaperlessChase company does. We plan to offer our CLE programs for free to lawyers who have been admitted to Louisiana in the past year. If you are a new lawyer, or want to help new lawyers then this is a good group to join. Click here to sign up if you're interested.

Mentoring new lawyers & providing free CLE

A few weeks ago I announced that I was shifting from the full-time practice of law to full-time work teaching lawyers how to make better use of technology (with the side-benefit of also offering them CLE credit, in Louisiana at least). Today, let me tell you about one important focal point of this move.

I want to do more to help mentor young lawyers.

Law school education has for a long time failed to provide truly practical information to budding lawyers. This is especially true when it comes to information about how to use technology to do a better job in the practice of law. So folks graduate from law school devoid of any sense of how to use technology.

New lawyers are also devoid of money after they pay all their law school bills.

So, here's how DigitalWorkflowCLE plans to help. First, we're going to focus some of our attention on helping new lawyers learn practical skills. And we're going to do it for free. Our first CLE program of the year will be a one hour webinar on Social Networking for Lawyers, and it will only be offered to Louisiana lawyers who've been in practice for three years or less.

The February 3rd webinar is limited to 15 new lawyers. Again, it's completely free and we provide 1 hour of CLE credit (includes Ethics credit). For other lawyers we'll be doing the Social Networking seminar a week later, on February 10, but we'll be charging $30 for the CLE credit (Ethics).