CLE Leadership & Management
Ideas, Resources, and Techniques for
CLE Professionals
A periodic e-newsletter
By Chuck Bingaman - chuck@chuckbingaman.com
#31 September 2006
Leadership  Danny Meyer, leading New York City restaurateur, has
a forthcoming book sub-titled “The Transforming Power of Hospitality
in Business.” Touching his theme recently in New York Times Magazine,
Meyer said, “Show me three world-class art museums with equally good
art and one of them will always have friendlier guards than the other two.
That’s the one I’m most likely to return to.” CLE, of course,
can be viewed as a highly competitive hospitality business. And, the friendliness
of our people can be a transforming competitive advantage.
IBM’s 2006 “Innovation Jam”, in worldwide
online sessions in July and two weeks ago, invited opinions of over 100,000
employees, clients, consultants, and even employees’ family members
on how to make new and better uses of technologies they work with. Might
be an interesting model for you to hear lawyers’ wants and needs more
clearly, to gather new ideas to pursue, to identify new stars out there for
future work together and to build PR for your organization. See www.globalinnovationjam.com/get_started2006/index.shtml for further information.
Management
Three
subjects for possible CLE course and publication consideration: state and federal
curbs on global warming, federal, state and local tax credits for rehabbing
older structures, and the ins and outs of off-shoring or outsourcing legal
work. 1. California just passed its own tough bill to curb fossil fuel emissions,
and other states are considering them. Even Congressional leaders are talking
about facing up to our global warming issues and actually doing something.
Legal restrictions on emissions, however slow they may have been in coming,
ARE coming now. And they’ll be fraught with legal issues and CLE needs/opportunities!
2. More than two dozen US states have enacted tax credits to encourage rehabbing
of older and historic structures, and local incentives are also available in
some areas. These laws and others affecting financing, preservation easements
and other incentives for preservations offer homebuyers and owners opportunities
worth exploring, and lawyers need to know about them. See www.nationaltrust.org/funding for a full list of statutes and other resources. 3. Finally, the sending of
legal work offshore to the Philippines, India or elsewhere is growing and presenting
law departments and law firms both opportunities and challenges. Get used the
acronym BPO (Business Process Outsourcing-—you’re going to see
if often now!) See, for instance, www.officetiger.com. Clearly sending legal
work overseas will be a thorny, controversial subject within our markets, but
it’s one that some lawyers will need to know about in practical detail,
and CLE sponsors can provide it in objective fashion. Legal
bloggers (or Blawgers) may offer your CLE organization a medium for reaching
markets from another angle or even markets you cannot usually reach for your
offerings. And they sometimes include opinion shapers who can spread your message
to thousands of people in a matter of minutes. Some bloggers have ready-made
niche audiences that might be eager to hear what you have to say. But remember
that bloggers are only willing to publicize your product or service if they
think it's a good fit with their audience--something most journalists would
never do. So, find the right blogger, become familiar with what they care about,
then deliver the right pitch and you could receive far more exposure online
than you'd ever get from, say, print media. Here's an even more powerful aspect:
Unlike journalists, bloggers often link to others’ blogs. So if the right
blogger picks up your story, it could be spread to other bloggers, and many
more readers, in short order. And unlike the uncertain itinerary of your direct
mail pieces, the unread lives of bar publications or the short shelf life of
most media, a blog post about your product or service lives on forever, patiently
waiting to be found by search engines. See, for instance, www.denniskennedy.com,
www.thecommonscold.com,
or other blawgers.
Resources Thanks
to New York State Bar CLE Director Terry Brooks and his staff for another
new edition of Comparison of the Features of Mandatory CLE Rules
in Effect as of July 2006! This annual tome is a great contribution to CLE people
everywhere! Milwaukee
lawyer, legal techno-wizard, and whirlwind CLE instructor Ross
Kodner has finally launched his own blog on legal technology, and it’s
terrific! See www.rossipsa.com. Ross is also launching a whole new company,
Factum Online, to offer legal technology instruction, CLE style, nationwide
and, naturally, online. Read
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of
More by
Chris Anderson (Hyperion Press, 2006) AND Blue Ocean Strategy:
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
by W.
Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Harvard Business School Publishing
Corp., 2005). (I saw Renée at the World Business Forum in NYC
two weeks ago and was very impressed with her work!) Both books have
VERY stimulating new insights into 21st century markets and strategizing
that are directly relevant to CLE. You could not find better books to
read together with your staff or to build staff/board retreats around! And,
while you’re on Amazon, check out Jerry Lee Lewis’s new—and
fantastic—CD, Last Man Standing! Rock n roll IS here to stay!!
Please call me if you would like to discuss any of the above subjects
in more detail! Chuck Bingaman
Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major American CLE organization,
Chuck now consults on strategic planning for CLE organizations and bar associations,
on marketing for CLE sponsors and law firms, on CLE executive hiring, and on
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.
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