My upcoming Louisiana CLE seminars (Baton Rouge & New Orleans)

I'll be doing three live, all-day CLE programs in late December: one in Baton Rouge and two in New Orleans. Each program is 6 hours of CLE credit, with 1 hour of Ethics and 1 hour of Professionalism. If you want to sign up use the promo code ERNIEATTORNEY to save 10% off the price of the program.

Here's a brief summary of the programs.

Digital Lawyering & Tech Tips (Baton Rouge) - Click to Sign-Up

When: Friday (Dec 21st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to use technology to work more productively while out of the office, and to more efficiently handle email in and out of the office. Litigators will learn how to gather information (including social media information), and to better organize that information. All lawyers will learn to avoid ethical problems and how to present a more professional online appearance to potential clients and others. We'll also cover the latest law-related tech tools, and tell you which ones are truly useful and reliable, and easiest to use.

Digital Lawyering & Tech Tips (New Orleans) - Click to Sign-Up

When: Thus (Dec 27st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to use technology to work more productively while out of the office, and how to more efficiently handle email in and out of the office. Litigators will learn how to gather information (including social media information), and to better organize that information. All lawyers will learn to avoid ethical problems and how to present a more professional online appearance to potential clients and others. We'll also cover the latest law-related tech tools, and tell you which ones are truly useful and reliable, and easiest to use.

Paperless Lawyering & Tech Tips (New Orleans) - Click to Sign-Up

When Friday (Dec 28st) - 6 hours total CLE (1 hr Ethics; 1 hr Professionalism; 4 hrs LPM)

Executive summary: All lawyers will learn how to lessen the reliance on paper, and to set up systems that allow them to work with documents more efficiently while out of the office. We'll explain how to create complex documents more easily, ways that allow those documents to be reused later as forms. Litigators will learn to be more effective in advocacy by using tools that help them create compelling visual presentations. We'll finish with a rapid-review of interesting tech tools, focusing on the ones that actually help you get more done in less time, with less stress. 

New Orleans Lawyer Meetup Group - Off to a good start

Last Wednesday  we had the inaugural gathering of the New Orleans Lawyer Meetup Group, which is going to be an informal gathering of lawyers who are new to the profession or new to the city. We welcome others who can help those new lawyers get started. So, obviously, we had some more experienced lawyers who can serve as mentors, providing useful advice or just plain old encouragement. And we had some folks who aren't lawyers, such as accountants, web-designers, tech-savvy folks etc. 

Technology plays a big part in helping lawyers practice law, so that's probably going to be a core part of the group. But, overall the goal is to make the meetings fun and informative in a casual way. We plan to meet once a month, probably on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Members of the group will automatically qualify for a 10% discount on any of the CLE seminars my PaperlessChase company does. We plan to offer our CLE programs for free to lawyers who have been admitted to Louisiana in the past year. If you are a new lawyer, or want to help new lawyers then this is a good group to join. Click here to sign up if you're interested.

CLE programs: why are they often irrelevant to most lawyers' practice areas?

I just got a brochure for a two day CLE program, and it reveals something that is common to a lot of these all day, or multi-day, programs: the choice of topics have no coherence, and therefore little utility for most lawyers. If you're going to spend all day in a CLE seminar wouldn't you want all (or most all) of the programs to be relevant to your practice? Isn't that they idea of CLE? If it's not relevant how can it benefit the lawyer or their clients?

Just so you see a concrete example, here is a list of some of the topics. As you read them ask yourself would a lawyer go to this multi-day seminar to learn, or just to load up on CLE credits?

• Jury selection tips
• Bankruptcy problems: how to avoid them
• How music conditions us culturally
• Eye witness identification problems
• Mobile lawyering tips
• "Grandma's last chance" (not sure what this is about)
• Recent developments in Civil procedure
• Recent developments in Criminal law
• Medicaid & Estate planning
• Commercial leases: how to avoid problems
• Ethics
• Land Use: planning and development

These mish-mash programs are offered because the people who put them on are dependent on getting free speakers, and it's hard to coordinate a bunch of free speakers who will talk about a coherent topic. I'm not condemning the organizer of this program; they're just doing what everyone else does. And it seems to be hard for most CLE organizers to figure out how to attract quality speakers on a regular basis.

Even if the organizer is a state bar association.

Upcoming iPad for Lawyers seminar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Lawyers in Baton Rouge who want to learn more about Mobile Lawyering with iPads should sign up for our Nov. 30th seminar. It’s at the Crown Plaza hotel on Friday afternoon, from 1 to 5 pm. Here are some things Dane Ciolino and I will cover:

• Security issues, and how to avoid them when using an iPad or mobile device
• Creating documents, editing and sharing
• Digital signatures and how to sign documents on an iPad
• Deposition tools, and strategies
• Note-taking software and tips for using effectively
• Display of trial exhibits using and iPad (including wireless presentation)

The seminar is limited to 35 people and will fill up fast. We have early bird pricing in effect until November 14th. Here are some more things to know about our seminar:

• 3 hours of CLE credit, including 1 hour of Ethics credit
• Free Wi-Fi available in the seminar room
• No questions asked refunds up until the day of the seminar
• We have free giveaways relevant to our talks (e.g. books on iPads for Lawyers)
• We offer free online videos at our website (you only pay if you want CLE credit)

For more information, and to reserve your spot with a credit card click here.

My book on "blogging for lawyers" is ready for order

The ABA is ready to begin accepting orders on my book: Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers (click link to order). Here's the gist of the book:

"Until a few years ago, only the largest firms could afford to engage an audience of millions. Now, lawyers in any size firm can reach a global audience at little to no cost--all because of blogs. An effective blog can help you promote your practice, become more "findable" online, and take charge of how you are perceived by clients, journalists and anyone who uses the Internet. Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers will show you how to create, maintain, and improve a legal blog--and gain new business opportunities along the way. In just one hour, you will learn to:

• Set up a blog quickly and easily
• Write blog posts that will attract clients
• Choose from various hosting options like Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress
• Make your blog friendly to search engines, increasing your ranking
• Tweak the design of your blog by adding customized banners and colors
• Easily send notice of your blog posts to Facebook and Twitter
• Monitor your blog's traffic with Google Analytics and other tools
• Avoid ethics problems that may result from having a legal blog

I've setup a special blog at OneHrBlog.com  to continue the conversation about how lawyers can learn to blog, or how to improve the blog they already have. Obviously, there are other lawyer-bloggers out there with great advice to offer on this topic so I'd love to hear from those folks. There's a twitter feed too. If you are interested in reviewing the book, shoot me an email and I'll get you a copy.

And this Friday I'll be on the This Week in Law podcast with Denise Howell and Rick Klau, two of the really early law bloggers. We'll be talking about the power of blogs, and other law-related topics, along with Evan Brown of the blog Internet Cases. So tune in at 1 pm Central Time to catch a rare reunion of some "old lawyer bloggers."*

* "old" measured in Internet Time of course, not in "human body aging time."