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

By Chuck Bingaman

<Email chuck@chuckbingaman.com; Twitter @chuckbingaman>

#41 September 2009

Leadership The ALI-ABA Critical Issues Summit heads CLE L&M leadership topics this month as final preparations gel for the October 15-17 conclave in Scottsdale AZ. Here are five clusters of facts you should know about the Summit…

Organized jointly by ALI-ABA and ACLEA, the Summit is bringing together 150 practitioners, judges, law school deans and professors, and CLE administrators and regulators to discuss and make recommendations on “equipping our lawyers: law school education, continuing legal education, and legal practice in the 21st century”.

The six broad topics to be examined (and topic chairs) are: Law Schools (Dean Richard A. Matasar, Dean and President, New York Law School); Bar Admissions (Gary Munneke, Professor of Law, Pace Law School, White Plains, NY), Generations (Steve Weise, Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe, Los Angeles); CLE (Lalla Shishkevish, District of Columbia Bar CLE Director); In-House Professional Development (Sari Fried-Fiori, Chief Professional Development Officer, Fulbright & Jaworski, Houston), Mandatory CLE (Holly Hitchcock, Executive Director, Rhode Island MCLE Commission).

Planners have identified 5-6 key issues for discussion and recommendations under each of the broad topics, and the 150 participants will seek to articulate recommendations on those issues for the guidance of the bar in future years.

An updated web site was launched last week at www.equippingourlawyers.org that provides detailed information on the Summit, archives preparatory papers and research, and invites pre- and post-Summit commentary from participants and the public. The site is designed to offer participation in the Summit by interested stakeholders that cannot be accommodated in person at the Summit.

Honorary chairs of the Summit are Dean JoAnne A. Epps, Temple University School of Law, Philadelphia, and Thomas Z. Hayward, K&L Gates LLP, Chicago. Executive Planning Chair is Pat Nester, CLE Director, State Bar of Texas. Administrative Planner/ Directors include Leslie Belasco and Mark Carroll of ALI-ABA, Philadelphia, and Donna Passons, ACLEA Executive Director, Austin, Texas.

Management How Not to Do It Department: The quite capable but frustrated young chef at a local restaurant told me that he had asked the owner how he was doing. The answer: “Don’t worry. If I see something I don’t like, I’ll let you know!” What a way to smother an employees’ confidence, to dampen his enthusiasm for the job, and to discourage innovation and experimentation! What a change it would have made had the owner, instead, been on the lookout for things his young chef was doing right and had he made a point of consistently mentioning them! What a difference it can make in our attitudes and productivity when we feel appreciated! P.S. The young chef quit within a month, leaving the owner in a difficult but self-inflicted crisis. Are you on the look out for catching your people doing things right and well? Encouraging them to try new approaches?  Does your organization have a strategic communications plan? That is, a systemized plan to connect your CLE organization’s mission and business goals to the forces and opportunities that exist in the marketplace and to give purpose to the work your people perform. In other words a structured, detailed, written plan by which incoming information on your CLE markets is planned for, sought after, shared and responded to and outgoing communication is equally planned and executed. The purpose of such planning is to maximize the effectiveness of all you and your organization do and to raise all employees’ sensitivities to their markets and their involvement in your organization’s business strategy. I recommend beginning with organizing the incoming part of communications—the intelligence gathering part—since we often give that part less attention then it merits. Then review and restructure ALL your outgoing communications based on responding to incoming information. Done right, a good strategic communications plan can yield up-to-date, actionable market intelligence, critical competitive information, and energize employees and governing board members.

Resources It’s not a CLE book, not even a “business” or “management’ book. But it IS an excellent “getting our heads around today’s world in a fresh, graphic and, for me, paradigm-shifting way” that I strongly recommend for all CLE leaders. It’s “The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Continues to Surprise Us and What We Can Do About It” by Joshua Cooper Ramo (Little, Brown, 2009). Ramo, former international affairs editor with Time Magazine and currently managing director of Kissinger & Associates, shows how chaos theory gives us a useful model for understanding current events and for dealing with their impacts on us and our careers. The key, he says, is building our immune systems and our resilience—both organizationally and personally—because we cannot predict what an interconnected, networked world will bring tomorrow. Or later today! Sober realism with unforgettable examples and specific suggestions.   The LERN Annual Conference is November 19 to 21 in Savannah, GA, and its themes this year are new media, beating tough times, and your program’s future. See full details at www.lern.org/conference. Every CLE organization could get valuable ideas for immediate application there.

Meeting Your Organization's Renewal Needs

Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major American CLE organization, I now consult on CLE strategic planning, marketing, communication and management challenges with CLE organizations, bar associations, and law firms. This fall I am serving as the Reporter for the ALI-ABA/ACLEA Critical Issues Summit. I welcome your inquiries on projects designed to enhance your organization’s effectiveness. Most engagements begin with a phone call from a potential client and a discussion of his or her particular needs, a written proposal from me, further discussion of exactly what the potential client wants accomplished and a written engagement letter setting out all details. I guarantee my work: if you are not satisfied, no charge is made. You can contact me at 603-756-9268, at chuck@chuckbingaman.com, or at P.O. Box 390, Walpole, NH, USA 03068. Past issues of this newsletter are archived at www.chuckbingaman.com.