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

By Chuck Bingaman - chuck@chuckbingaman.com

#38 May 2009

Leadership    Old friend Dick McCoy has been appointed Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, replacing now retired Roger Meilton. Roger leaves a respected legacy of leadership, both on the state and national levels, and will be missed in CLE circles. Dick brings a depth of experience and creative ideas that will keep PBI at the forefront of CLE leadership!    Planning continues for the ACLEA/ALI-ABA CLE Summit titled Critical Issues: Equipping Our Lawyers… Law School Education, Continuing Legal Education, and Legal Practice in the 21st Century. Whew! What a title! It’s set for October 15 through 17 at the Scottsdale Princess Resort. Executive Planning Chair Pat Nester reports that most of the 150 by-invitation slots at the conference are now reserved. See www.theclesummit.org for more information. BTW, an updated summit web site is in the works!

Management     Want to see the future of effective CLE? Check out PLI XChange on several programs being advertised on the Practising Law Institute site at www.PLI.edu. PLI R&D Director Guy Alvarez says that the new platform is designed to enhance the PLI program experience. XChange offers a special web site for each program that enables faculty and registrants to connect before and after a program, for materials to be available before and after and even to make program presentations available to registrants afterward. Right now PLI is testing XChange with just nine programs. Very innovative! Very Web 2.0!    Minnesota CLE last week announced a newly updated website at www.minncle.org. Check it out!    While attending the ABA Section of Litigation Annual Conference in Atlanta two weeks ago, I had the opportunity of seeing Dean and Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky do a 60-minute U.S. Supreme Court update presentation. What a tour de force! Chemerinsky covered material in a nine-section outline, each section of which contained 3-4 recent decisions, with clarity, detail and wit, and he did it without once looking at any notes! And talk about being current! He even referred to developments that happened “the day before yesterday!” Despite it being early afternoon, and he kept the audience awake and at rapt attention! True, he violated half of the rules of effective CLE presentations, but it was a jaw-dropping performance! If you want a keynoter for a constitutional law session of any kind, check him out! See www. www.law.uci.edu/profile_e_chemerinsky.html.

Resources      Despite my skepticism—and that, I’m sure, of many of you—Twitter seems to be growing rapidly as a communications medium that we need to integrate into our bag of CLE tricks. Or should I say twicks? [Sorry, couldn’t resist that!] Started initially as a personal communication medium, businesses are getting into Twitter in a big way to monitor what their customers are saying about them and to provide inexpensive, responsive customer service, especially when service has gone off the tracks for whatever reason. Plus more and more CLE groups are trying Twitter for marketing communications. See @IICLE and @minncle. I plan to begin tweeting on CLE matters, and you can register to follow my tweets at @chuckbingaman. Let me know what you think!   For comprehensive and continuing instruction on using Twitter, see the blog www.twitip.com. It’s almost all you’ll ever need to know about using this new tool. Incidentally, unlike many new technology wonders, Twitter may actually replace something (a lot of email) rather than simply pile on top of all the other things we’ve had to learn (or sort of learn) to stay abreast of things!   While we’re on blogs, I highly recommend reading Tom Peters’ blog, www.tompeters.com. Tom’s always full of energy, passion and solid ideas on customer service, business organization, and innovations that can be adapted to CLE! Plus he tells a GREAT story!

Meeting Your Organizational Needs

In July I’m facilitating a CLE planning summit with the leaders of the ABA Section of Litigation—the ABA’s largest section with over 55,000 members. The goal is to identify ways to upgrade the Section’s CLE offerings. In preparation, I’ve been attending Section events, analyzing brochures and publications, surveying Section members, using focus groups, and talking with members, leaders and staff.   I’m also serving as the Reporter for the ACLEA/ALI-ABA CLE Summit in October.   Most immediately I’m preparing a report on using Twitter in CLE.

Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major American CLE organization, I now consult on CLE strategic planning, marketing, and management challenges with CLE organizations, bar associations, and law firms. I welcome your inquiries on projects designed to enhance your organization’s effectiveness. You can contact me at 603-756-9268, at chuck@chuckbingaman.com, or at P.O. Box 390, Walpole, NH, USA 03068-0390. Past issues of this newsletter are archived at www.chuckbingaman.com.