CLE Leadership & Management
Ideas, Resources, and Techniques for CLE Professionals
A periodic e-newsletter

By Chuck Bingaman - chuck@chuckbingaman.com

#24 October 2005

Leadership    Wow! Have you noted the terrific leadership provided by the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama State Bar Associations, among many others, in quickly restructuring their web sites to provide their members—and their members’ clients—with key information, resources, free CLE and assorted links to deal with the devastation to lawyers from Katrina and Rita? See www.lsba.org, www.msbar.org and www.alabar.org/katrina. And did you see that our old CLE friend Ross Kodner of MicroLaw, Inc., based in Milwaukee, set up www.HelpKatrinaLawyers.org within hours of the storm to list disaster relief resources and related aid and to organize volunteer assistance to lawyers for data recovery/restoration, tips on practicing with borrowed, rented or new computers, remote access for lawyers to complete work for clients, temporary office space and housing, and even longer term needs? Very impressive! “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the ‘play-it-safers’, the creators of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” Cecil Beaton, (1859—1941) French philosopher. Speaking of “imaginative vision”, the Illinois Supreme Court announced September 29 that it will impose a sweeping mandatory CLE plan taking effect next year. Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education Executive Director Karen Darby is now poised to play a leading role in her THIRD major U.S. state transitioning into mandatory CLE! Good luck, Karen! As reported here last January, the new LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Legal Fellowship awards two $15,000 grants each year - one in the summer and one in the winter - to individuals or associations to promote education, the practice of public interest law and diversity in the legal profession. Laurie Parise, an attorney at the New York-based Legal Action Center (LAC), has been named the first recipient of the fellowship. The application deadline for the second fellowship is December 31, 2005, with the winner to be announced in January 2006. For more information or to submit a grant application, go to www.martindale.com/ratings and click on the "Legal Fellowship" icon. This could be a GREAT opportunity for a not-for-profit CLE sponsor to get funding for a public interest project.

Management    Have you tried using contests within your CLE organization to kindle interest in a project, to generate creative ideas, or to raise the needed level of cross-fertilization among departments? Many on a CLE staff can suggest marketing ideas for a new publication or course, a name for a new service, or an innovative solution to a vexing problem. My experience has shown several times that good, sometimes great, ideas lurk in places where I least expect them. Helping them surface through a contest was both valuable to the enterprise AND a great chance to recognize someone who otherwise seldom saw the limelight.   Plan NOW for how you are going to recognize your colleagues, key vendors, invaluable CLE volunteers and even your customers at the rapidly approaching Holiday Season. These plans might be apt subjects for employee committees or even contests for clever, innovative new ideas.   Andy Warhol was exaggerating a bit when he said everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. But all of us CAN be famous—for our attitudes and actions—to 15 people! We might start with the 15 people with whom we work most closely and maybe 15 whom we serve in our professional capacities. If we can accomplish those feats, it should be easy to build out from there.  The Wall Street Journal reported last Monday that Home Depot has been very pleased with the results of requiring ALL of its outside directors to spend at least one full day each year in one of their stores meeting with managers, employees and customers. Such a visit “makes you a much better board member”, says Gregory Brenneman, CEO of Burger King and an outside director of Home Depot. Brenneman says that, as a result of the policy, directors grasp nitty-gritty issues faster, ask smarter questions during board meetings, get to know rising stars in the organization, and obtain fuller insights into the performance of the chief executive. For many years I have run full-day, on- site orientation programs for new CLE board members. The results have been substantive and very positive. Maybe we should have expanded them to all directors annually! Few CLE board members really know how the organizations they set policy for really run from the inside. I know, I know, some CLE directors—usually lawyers—will complain about the time required. But in most CLE situations ALL directors are outside directors, and they have no experience managing a business such as a CLE enterprise. To launch and maintain such a program, start by selling your board chair and officers, persuade them to condition new directors’ joining the board on a commitment to attend a full-day orientation, and then to build out from there. And make sure the experience they have is substantive and interesting.

Resources    Premiere Global Services is hosting a free 60-minute web cast Monday, October 24 on “Breaking Down the Successful CLE Brochure”, and I’ll be the leader. For information on how to receive the program, contact Mary Ann Chudina at maryann.chudina@premiereglobal.com.   While attending the World High Performance Forum sponsored by HSM, the Kellogg School of Management, The Wall Street Journal and others in Chicago November 15-16, I’ll be taking detailed notes for several CLE consulting clients and relating them to CLE organizations’ interests. The Forum will feature Stephen Covey with new insights on effective management, John Kotter on leadership, Mike Ditka on team building, Ram Charan on strategic planning and execution, Patrick Lencioni on high performance teams, and Frank McGuire on building customer focused people. Should be very worthwhile and intensely practical. If you are interested in seeing my notes afterward as well, please let me know.  Want some high tech support for your napping habit, support that relies on sound research proving that naps are GOOD? See www.pzizz.com!

I welcome your feedback!  Please keep in touch!  CCB

Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major American CLE organization, Chuck now consults and teaches on strategic planning, marketing, blogging and management challenges with CLE and other legal organizations, law firms, law schools and others. He also offers economical in-house training through conference call courses for CLE and bar association staffs. He welcomes your inquiries on projects designed to enhance your organization’s effectiveness. You can contact him at chuck@chuckbingaman.com, at 1-603-756-9268, or at P.O. Box 390, Walpole, NH, USA 03068-0390. Past issues of this newsletter are archived at www.chuckbingaman.com.