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.

What I'll be doing next year (hint: not practicing law)

Starting next year I’ll be winding down my law practice to focus almost exclusively on growing the CLE company that Dane Ciolino and I started a few years ago. For the non-lawyer readers “CLE” refers to “continuing legal education,” which is a requirement for most lawyers in the United States.

Every year those lawyers who have CLE requirements have to scramble to find accredited seminars that will provide the credit that they need to keep their law license valid. Sadly, most CLE seminars are boring and tedious. But lawyers go because they have to get the credit.

Six years ago I encountered some really interesting (and useful) CLE seminars about how to use technology in the practice of law. This happened at the ABA TechShow in Chicago, which is always held in late March. If you haven’t been, you should try to go.

Anyway, PaperlessChase.com, the company that Dane and I formed, was an effort to bring some of the same kind of information to lawyers in Louisiana. We just finished three days of seminars in New Orleans, which is something we’ve done every year at the end of the year. It’s easier to get lawyers to come to your seminar if it’s held right before the deadline for getting CLE. And up to now we haven’t known how else to get enough attention from lawyers.

We know we need to hold the seminars more often, but marketing any product (even a great one) can be a major challenge.

Everytime we have these seminars the attendees tell us that they’d wish we’d do these seminars more often. After the last seminar we received this fairly typical comment: “This was the most meaningful CLE I have attended in my 20 years as a lawyer.” Obviously, that kind of feedback is inspiring. And motivating, because it makes me realize that there are lots of lawyers who desperately want to learn more about technology, and how it can improve their law practice.

But, as I said, reaching these lawyers during the first 11 months of the year is a challenge. Any challenge can be met, the only question is: how?

The first step was to bring in Megan Hargroder, an amazing young woman I met by virtue of working at LaunchPad. Megan has many skills that we need. She majored in Broadcast Journalism, and was a “one woman band” news reporter at a major TV news company in Lafayette, LA. She knows how to speak, write, produce video, and edit it. She’s also a social media expert and has her own consulting company. She’s also adept at figuring out new technology, and finding low-cost ways of solving problems.

Megan isn’t an employee of our company; she’s a full partner. But bringing Megan in isn’t enough to get us where we need to be, so that’s why I’m winding down my law practice. I’ll keep my license and maybe do some work here and there, but for the most part I’m going “all in” on growing DigitalWorkflowCLE.

I’m really excited, and energized by this decision. Dane and Megan are excited too, and, together, we’re going to do some interesting things. There are other people out there that we want to work with, and that’s definitely an important part of the equation. But for now, it’s about getting our focus and building awareness of what we’re doing.

Wish us luck, and let us know if you have any helpful ideas. We’re not the only ones with this idea so there’ll be competition, and that’s fine. If competition makes the quality of CLE programming improve that’s a win for lawyers and the legal profession.

I like win-win propositions. And I like helping people. So I’m really eager to start this new year, and I will be holding my glass a little higher when I make a champagne toast at midnight.

My end-of-the-year CLE seminar for New Orleans attorneys

As many of you may know, I am very involved with DigitalWorkflowCLE, a company that provides continuing legal education seminars to Louisiana attorneys. Our focus is on technology, and helping lawyers figure out how to use it to be more productive, and to do a better job for their clients.

The premise of DigitalWorkflowCLE is that learning technology can be interesting, useful, and even fun. The trick is to find the right approach, which obviously includes finding speakers who know technology and are good at explaining it. For the past few years, that's what our end-of-the-year seminars have provided.

People who have attended our seminars rhapsodize about them, which is not what lawyers who go to CLE seminars tend to do. That's because most CLE seminars shoot for a minimal quality standard. Sadly, that minimal standard is the norm. Of course, some lawyers don't really care about learning anything at a CLE seminar; they just want the CLE credit so that they can keep practicing law.

Our seminars are not for those lawyers. Our seminars are for lawyers who, not only want to get CLE credit, but also want to actually learn something useful. You won't see bored lawyers reading the newspapers at our seminars. Quite the opposite; they're engaged and excited and very much appreciate our different approach to lawyer education.

As always, our end-of-the-year seminar takes place between Christmas and New Years. Except that this year we're offering two full days of CLE. You can sign up for one day, or both days (with a discount if you attend both days). And for a short while, we're offering "Early Bird pricing."

Seating is limited because we prefer a more intimate setting, as opposed to a large hotel venue. We do our seminars in the large conference room on the first floor of the IP Building at 643 Magazine St. (behind the US Fifth Circuit). The room will hold about 50 people, which is perfect for us.

Dane Ciolino and I will be doing most of the sessions, but we'll be having some excellent outside speakers as well. Jeff Richardson of iPhoneJD fame will be doing a session on mobile lawyering that will cover the use of tablet devices such as iPads. And Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan from the Eastern District of Louisiana will participate in a panel discussion of common e-discovery issues.

We'll be doing an email blast in a few days, which should get a lot of attention from folks that may not have typically been to our seminars. So, if the readers of this blog want to reserve a spot they should sign up soon. For more details, and to sign up, click here. If you were there last year you'll remember we had a lot of fun with giveaways, and this year we plan to ramp up the giveaways. We're also planning lots of other things to make the experience as enjoyable as possible.