Upcoming iPad CLE Seminar in New Orleans

Lawyers are buying iPads in droves, but after the initial euphoria sometimes feeling like they aren't taking full advantage of its power. Now's your chance to find out how you can get more out of your iPad, and how you can keep it safe and avoid inadvertent disclosures of sensitive information.

In this 1 hour CLE you'll see me, and and a legal technology trainer named Adriana Linares, demostrate apps and tips straight from our iPads, so you can follow along on yours. Among the things we'll demonstrate are:

• Setting up your iPad for maximum security & mobility
• Document management: getting them on the iPad and synching them
• The power of speech on an iPad: Siri & the Google Search app
• Best apps for lawyers for calendaring, e-filing and trial display

The seminar will take place on Friday, March 29th at noon, and is accredited in Louisiana for 1 hour of CLE credit, including 'Law Practice Management'. For more information, and to sign up for the seminar (early bird pricing is in effect for a limited time!), CLICK HERE.

And use the the promocode 'ernieattorney' to get 10% off the early bird pricing. But act swiftly because the venue has very limited seating, and this is always a popular session.

Louisiana lawyers needing 'Professionalism CLE' credit, don't fret

Louisiana lawyers who still need Professionalism credit can get it online a my PaperlessChase.com site. If you need Ethics credit we have courses for those too. If you need more than 4 hours of credit come to one of our live seminars. And if you know any other lawyers who are agonizing about getting those credits let 'em know that there's an easy way to learn and get CLE credit online.

My upcoming Louisiana CLE seminars (Baton Rouge & New Orleans)

I'll be doing three live, all-day CLE programs in late December: one in Baton Rouge and two in New Orleans. Each program is 6 hours of CLE credit, with 1 hour of Ethics and 1 hour of Professionalism. If you want to sign up use the promo code ERNIEATTORNEY to save 10% off the price of the program.

Here's a brief summary of the programs.

Digital Lawyering & Tech Tips (Baton Rouge) - Click to Sign-Up

When: Friday (Dec 21st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to use technology to work more productively while out of the office, and to more efficiently handle email in and out of the office. Litigators will learn how to gather information (including social media information), and to better organize that information. All lawyers will learn to avoid ethical problems and how to present a more professional online appearance to potential clients and others. We'll also cover the latest law-related tech tools, and tell you which ones are truly useful and reliable, and easiest to use.

Digital Lawyering & Tech Tips (New Orleans) - Click to Sign-Up

When: Thus (Dec 27st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to use technology to work more productively while out of the office, and how to more efficiently handle email in and out of the office. Litigators will learn how to gather information (including social media information), and to better organize that information. All lawyers will learn to avoid ethical problems and how to present a more professional online appearance to potential clients and others. We'll also cover the latest law-related tech tools, and tell you which ones are truly useful and reliable, and easiest to use.

Paperless Lawyering & Tech Tips (New Orleans) - Click to Sign-Up

When Friday (Dec 28st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to lessen the reliance on paper, and to set up systems that allow them to work with documents more efficiently while out of the office. We'll explain how to create complex documents more easily, ways that allow those documents to be reused later as forms. Litigators will learn to be more effective in advocacy by using tools that help them create compelling visual presentations. We'll finish with a rapid-review of interesting tech tools, focusing on the ones that actually help you get more done in less time, with less stress. 

CLE programs: why are they often irrelevant to most lawyers' practice areas?

I just got a brochure for a two day CLE program, and it reveals something that is common to a lot of these all day, or multi-day, programs: the choice of topics have no coherence, and therefore little utility for most lawyers. If you're going to spend all day in a CLE seminar wouldn't you want all (or most all) of the programs to be relevant to your practice? Isn't that they idea of CLE? If it's not relevant how can it benefit the lawyer or their clients?

Just so you see a concrete example, here is a list of some of the topics. As you read them ask yourself would a lawyer go to this multi-day seminar to learn, or just to load up on CLE credits?

• Jury selection tips
• Bankruptcy problems: how to avoid them
• How music conditions us culturally
• Eye witness identification problems
• Mobile lawyering tips
• "Grandma's last chance" (not sure what this is about)
• Recent developments in Civil procedure
• Recent developments in Criminal law
• Medicaid & Estate planning
• Commercial leases: how to avoid problems
• Ethics
• Land Use: planning and development

These mish-mash programs are offered because the people who put them on are dependent on getting free speakers, and it's hard to coordinate a bunch of free speakers who will talk about a coherent topic. I'm not condemning the organizer of this program; they're just doing what everyone else does. And it seems to be hard for most CLE organizers to figure out how to attract quality speakers on a regular basis.

Even if the organizer is a state bar association.

Interviewed by WVUE Fox8 News regarding social media legislation

I was interviewed by Evan Anderson for a TV segment on New Orleans’ Fox8 News regarding the recently enacted Louisiana law (Act 375), which prohibits online impersonation. The Act makes it illegal to:

• sign up for an email account, if
• you don’t have permission of the person in whose name the account is being created

The maximum fine is $1,000, and the maximum jail sentence is six months. It’s not a crime with harsh penalties, but it would seem to be pretty easy to prove.

Our paperless lawyering seminar coming to Baton Rouge in early July

Do you want to learn to take your law practice to a new level of efficiency? Becoming paperless is the path you want to take, and it's not as hard as you'd imagine. Dane Ciolino and I are going to do a 3 hour live CLE seminar in Lafayette, Louisiana this Thursday from 1 – 4 pm (April 19th). So, if you're able to attend, please click here for more details on the topics we'll cover, and to sign up.

If you're not able to attend, then you can still watch our free online videos (which include Ethics and Professionalism CLE). If you're a Louisiana attorney and want CLE credit then you can pay us and we'll get you credit for watching the videos. We have many more free videos on advanced paperless processes over here.

Information is power, but knowing how to process digital information is like having "superpowers." We teach people how to acquire these superpowers (and lawyers get CLE credit). Wouldn't you like to learn how to become paperless and take your practice to an amazing new level of efficiency?

Louisiana's rule re: service of process on attorneys is proof that alien invaders would kick our butts

The other day I got a call from a civil sheriff who wants to serve me with some papers. These are motion papers I received in PDF form weeks ago. What’s more, the papers don’t directly involve my client. It’s nice to keep informed of these ancillary proceedings, but I don’t need the sheriff’s office to deploy men to help me do this. Remember: I already have the PDF copy of the motion, which came to me via The Internet.

The problem I’m describing is required by Louisiana rules of procedure. The rule made sense before the wide-spread adoption of fax machines, email, and the Internet. We may still need sheriffs to serve subpoenas on non-attorneys. But attorneys are officers of the court and requiring sheriffs to serve pleadings on them is needlessly cumbersome and expensive.

Why do we keep doing it?

Answer: because it creates work for sheriffs. And the sheriffs know how to lobby their local legislators to make sure that work doesn’t dry up. If it weren’t for that the rule would have been changed a long time ago. Remember this the next time you hear someone say we live in a “civilized society.” Truth is, many people like things the old fashioned way: inefficient is fine as long as it helps them.

And the next time you see a movie about aliens invading the earth to do us harm remember this: if this ever really happened we’d have no shot. We aren’t even trying solving the obvious problems that technology can help us with. What chance would we have against an advanced race that has solved the mind-boggling problem of inter-stellar travel?

None. Zero. Zilch.

My podcast interview with Enrico Shaefer about my new venture

I got a call from my friend Enrico Shaefer right after I announced that I was shifting out of the practice of law to do more CLE programs for lawyers who were interested in technology. He practices law and tries to innovate wherever possible to do a better job for clients at a lower cost, so he and I have kept in touch (mostly through social media). He has a weekly podcast where he interviews folks about innovation in the law etc., and so he interviewed me. The interview lasted about 20 minutes as I recall. You can either listen to the podcast, or read the transcript.

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.