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

By Chuck Bingaman

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

#45 November 2010

Leadership   Congrats to the State Bar of Texas CLE! At its recent Annual Conference, LERN gave it one of its 2011 International Marketing Awards for a program of blast emails to former customers offering a $100 discount for a new registration in the next year. Each of the two emails went to over 21,000 names, and the subject lines said “Take $100 Off CLE” or “Take $100 Off Your CLE”. Open rates for the mailings were 37% and 39%, and new income topped $16,000. Texas CLE says it brought in registrants it would not otherwise have attracted, the revenue, despite the discount, was still above the break-even and, because the efforts were generated in-house, the project cost was quite low. Congrats as well to the Legal Education Society of Alberta—LESA—for also getting a LERN Award for its “Join the Table with an Ace UP Your Sleeve” theme for its annual Refresher Course. The theme, suggesting the value of attending the course, was carried through the graphics and text of the multi-faceted promotional plan. For complete information on the Texas and Alberta efforts, see the 2011 International Awards section at www.LERN.org. Finally, kudos to outgoing ACLEA President Kent Hopper! Very effective leadership and the best term-ending remarks ever at the July meeting in NYC! And to Vince O’Brien of Minnesota CLE as he moves ahead in his presidency of ACLEA! Vince’s always-positive attitude, attention to detail, and stellar people skills will serve the organization well over the next year! We’re lucky to have him! Readers of this newsletter know I often quote management guru Tom Peters and believe that he has a LOT to say to all of us.  Last month, in a posting on his blog, Tom argued that the most important four words in business are (drum roll, please), “What do YOU think?”  Critical, Tom says, for telling your employees, your customers, and your colleagues that you are paying attention to them.  And invaluable in getting feedback on what you’re doing, thinking, planning, etc. None of us has to know it all, and certainly none of us do. But, together, we can do really good work and well serve our customers, employees, colleagues and organizations. What do YOU think?

Management  LERN is phasing in a new approach to continuing education credit: the International Learning Unit, and the difference is that it is based on actual learning, NOT simply time spent. This outcome-based approach, it seems to me, is THE valid way to measure professional education and the way that mandatory CLE measurement should and must go. By relying solely on time measurements, we’re selling our professionalism short and kidding ourselves and the public about what we're accomplishing. What do YOU think? “UnConferences” are one edgy new area of adult education, even professional education. Google “unconference” and you’ll get hundreds of hits and a lot of good info. As an example, see www.abanet.org/legalservices/specialization/round.html where Matt Homan facilitates the 2010 ABA National Roundtable on Specialty Certification. For a contrary view on using unconferences for lawyers, see Kevin O’Keefe’s July 11 post at his blog kevin.lexblog.com/2010/07/articles/cool-stuff/the-challenge-of-unconferences-and-panels-at-legal-conferences. Neither mentions issues that may be raised by MCLE regulators wedded to last century’s education techniques. Still the unconference may be an approach that many CLE sponsors should be experimenting with. Leaders of ACLEA and ALI-ABA have launched a website and newsletter designed to support implementation of the Recommendations of last fall’s Summit on Equipping Our Lawyers. I am honored to be their editor. See www.EquippingOurLawyers.com. All ACLEA members have been registered for the periodic newsletter to be mailed from an email domain called .greatBIGnews. If you have NOT gotten the initial three issues, please tell your spam filter program that emails from .greatBIGnews are to be accepted.

Resources   Want some really practical, down-to earth teaching tips to build in to your CLE planning? Check out a great new book—and included DVD—called Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov (Jossey-Boss 2010). In it, Lemov describes and shows us video clips of stellar teachers using their subtle (and not so subtle) techniques that set them apart. True, it is aimed at elementary teachers, but many of the techniques are quite adaptable to the professional education classroom.   Read “New Hampshire’s Performance-Based Variant of the Bar Examination: The Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program Moves Beyond the Pilot Phase” by Prof. John Burwell Garvey at www.ncbex.org/uploads/user_docrepos/790210_Garvey.pdf. This eye-opening article in Bar Examiner Magazine, details the Granite State’s innovative and ambitious program to make its law students “client-ready” upon graduation. The Daniel Webster Scholars Honor Program is a joint project of the University of New Hampshire School of Law, the New Hampshire Supreme Court and the New Hampshire State Board of Law Examiners. In some respects, the UNH School of Law program, based explicitly on the McCrate Report recommendations, has moved boldly ahead with what the Summit Recommendations are asking other institutions to begin considering! It may provide an important working model of law school education of the future, phased bar admission, transition education, in-house training and 21st century CLE. I think it is difficult to overstate the importance of this program as a model for the continuum of legal education.

Meeting Your Organization's Renewal Needs
Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major American CLE organization, I now consult on strategic planning, marketing, communication and management challenges with CLE organizations, bar associations, and law firms. I am currently serving ACLEA and ALI-ABA as Communications Facilitator for implementation of the Equipping Our Lawyers Summit Recommendations formed at last fall’s Summit meeting. I welcome your inquiries on consulting projects designed to enhance your organization’s effectiveness. You can contact me at 603-756-9268, at chuck@chuckbingaman.com. Past issues of this newsletter are archived at www.chuckbingaman.com.