Here is the official reason my staff hold back rolling their eyes every time I spend four minutes answering what they thought was a simple CLE question: We are a national CLE provider.

We are a national CLE provider in a decentralized regulatory field.

This means mastering the art of uncertainty. The answer to nearly every CLE question is “it depends.” It depends on which state an attorney is licensed in. It depends on the shelf life of the program (when did the attorney even take the program?!). It depends on the format of the program. It depends on whether there are still COVID-specific exemptions in place. It depends on the new fees implemented by a state bar six months ago that you just found out about last week. It depends on just about every small detail of a situation to answer CLE questions most of the time. I ask a LOT of follow-up questions.

So, to work as a national CLE provider in a field that is fully decentralized, not only do you need to be able to ride the wave of constant change, you have to be incredibly detail-oriented! Have you ever met a relaxed type-A person?! This is why we are a niche field.

That being said, we do try to meet the highest common denominator in the “hardest” states. So yes, sometimes we hold our standards higher than an attorney’s specific state. And yes, said attorney always knows when their state doesn’t require x number of pop-ups during a webinar, because of course they do. But can they remember to finish all their CLE hours before December 31? Nah.

But mostly we try to be kind, and patient, because we know that in a field that has 46 sets of rules, there’s a lot of room for frustration, interpretation, and conversation.

It takes a village to keep up. And boy am I glad we have an ACLEA village for it.

Kelly Powers-Hamp
Associate Director, MCLE Accreditation, American Bar Association
Nationals SIG Co-Chair
Professional Question Asker

Over the past 21 months, I’ve often stopped to remind myself what day (and year) it was. Thankfully, I’ve had my family and friends, wonderful colleagues, CLE deadlines, and plenty of calendar reminders to help me through this time vacuum. As we closed out another busy, turbulent, and interesting CLE year, I met with my MCLE Committee co-chair, Mary Lynn Stoffel, and we took a moment to reflect on 2021 and look ahead to 2022. While it might be a bit cliché, here is a top-10 list of lessons and reminders as we head into 2022.

• 10. The one constant in life is change.

This is applicable in our personal and professional lives. In the professional world, MCLE rules are still changing. Some of these rule changes are due to the pandemic (e.g., some states allowing virtual program participation); other changes are to encourage lawyers to think about development within the profession (e.g., diversity, elimination of bias and inclusion, mental health and wellness, and technology). Change isn’t easy, but groups like ACLEA certainly help navigate it!

• 9. CLE programming continues to educate lawyers and provide moments to connect.

I’ve heard from many lawyers impressed with not only the number and quality of CLE programs made available during the pandemic, but also how CLE provides an opportunity to connect with their peers. CLE credits are important, but these comments solidify how CLE programs serve multiple purposes.

• 8. Embrace technology.

When you learn a new tech tip, please share! Technological tools can save lots of time or spark new ideas.

• 7. Practice, practice, practice.

Practice makes perfect (or close to perfect) and helps with planning for the unexpected. For example, asking instructors to practice presenting on a virtual delivery platform ahead of a program (and be ready for a backup plan if the Wi-Fi goes out) can save multiple people a last-minute scramble.

• 6. Carve out time for your personal development.

As CLE professionals, we help lawyers with their professional development. Things get busy, but it’s important to invest in your development too. ACLEA conferences, engagement in committees and special interest groups, and programs within your own organizations are great resources.

• 5. Listen.

We are all moving fast, but taking the time to listen might save you significant time in the future, or help you connect with another person.

• 4. Practicing gratitude gives you superpowers.

Life is full of ups and downs. Finding something big or small to be grateful for can help you get through the rough days. If you haven’t heard of gratitude journaling, I highly recommend checking it out.

• 3. Spend time on building relationships (personal and professional).

Taking the time to connect with one another can help boost your mood and provide a new outlook on life, work, or challenges. My quick connects with my co-chair Mary Lynn always bring a smile to my face, and taking the time to call people at various MCLE boards typically results in learning something new.

• 2. Do one thing that scares you each day.

The only way to grow and change personally and professionally is to get out of that comfort zone!

• 1. Remember that we are all human and trying to navigate this thing called life.

As Ellie Krug shared in the plenary session “Gray Area Thinking” at the 2021 ACLEA Annual Meeting, we are each “trying to survive the human condition.” Please be kind to one another and yourself. We’ve navigated another interesting year that has made us all stronger, more resilient, and hopefully more compassionate. Take a moment to reflect on lessons learned and embrace those you love.

Wishing you all a healthy and happy 2022!

Gina:
It was 1975. Summer. And my previous carefree relationship with dipping a toe in the water changed forever with just a few notes on the piano…da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. 

Even though I lived in the midwest and was a thousand miles away from the nearest shark, I’d never even seen an ocean, and certainly shouldn’t have seen the movie—Jaws forever changed the way that I thought about swimming, survival, and scary movies. 

Looking back, adjustments I made—ensuring I could always touch bottom and run out of the water if necessary; identifying who I’d be willing to sacrifice in my bid to get away with all limbs; and having a companion who would shield me from the scariest parts of any movie scene while I created bruises as I grasped them uncomfortably tightly—were probably unnecessary. 

And then it was 2020. Spring (well, really still Winter). And my previous carefree relationship with conferences changed forever with the start of a pandemic. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. 

COVID-19 has now forever altered the way I think about personal interactions; facilitating engaging experiences for attendees; technology related to conferences and how it helps, hinders, and adds expense; and the varied comfort levels of all persons involved in a conference. 

Fall 2021: In-person conferences were back! We were moving ahead with plans to get attendees together in a room with speakers at a podium or table delivering educational content, albeit with new procedures and protocols in place. 

But new spikes in COVID cases, the Delta variant, and conflicting views on masks and vaccines meant that we were having to make the same (or even more) decisions about how to adjust programming to create the best experience for our attendees, while fulfilling contracts and covering expenses. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. 

While I had so little reason to fear that I would experience a shark attack and need to utilize the contingencies I’d planned in my head, COVID and how it changed the conference experience and the decisions I make have affected nearly every day since. 

Do we forgo the in-person conference and again move to an online only event? Do we stream the program as a hybrid event and allow an online audience to access the educational content at the same time as the in-person audience? Do we stream in remote speakers who are not allowed or able to travel to the in-person event? How do we ensure engagement with our online attendees—both with each other within the platform and with speakers and attendees at the in-person event? 

As I work with ABA staff to answer these questions for our upcoming events, I encourage you to consider the needs of your audiences as well as the parameters of your own technology and budgets when planning for your upcoming conferences. 

Kristin:
These were also the questions ACLEA contemplated when finalizing plans for the 58th Midyear Meeting, coming up January 22-24, 2022 in Austin, Texas. And this is how we answered those questions. 

Do we forgo the in-person conference and again move to an online only event? 

ACLEA had originally planned our 2021 Midyear Meeting to be held in Austin. After much negotiation, the hotel agreed to allow us to postpone the contract to 2022 or face stiff penalties for canceling. As such, ACLEA agreed to hold the upcoming 2022 Midyear Meeting in-person in Austin.

In order to fulfill the obligations of our contract, ACLEA needs to encourage as many in-person attendees to come to Austin as possible. ACLEA focused on ways to ensure the safest environment for our attendees: a vaccine mandate/negative test requirement; encouraging masks; and working with the hotel on cleaning and social distancing.  

Do we stream the program as a hybrid event and allow an online audience to access the educational content at the same time as the in-person audience? 

Working with our LMS partner CE21 and the Austin Planning Committee, ACLEA approved a virtual program to accompany the in-person event. We will stream all plenary sessions and two sessions from each breakout session throughout the event. These will also be recorded and made available to attendees to access online. 

While there is additional expense to offer an online option, ACLEA determined that it was critical to allow our entire membership access to the event, even if they did not travel to the live in-person event in Austin. ACLEA is committed to giving our members options and allowing all members the choice to not travel but still be involved with the conference and take advantage of the high-quality content that has been planned.  

Do we stream in remote speakers who are not allowed or able to travel to the in-person event? 

In determining if we should allow speakers who are not allowed or able to travel to Austin to present remotely, there were three components to our analysis: technology; expense; and most importantly, the impact on the experience of our in-person audience. 

The technology surrounding pulling in and pushing out a stream to both audiences is more complicated than it might first appear. While technology is relatively simple to do one or the other, when looking to do both at the same time (stream in speakers to the live in-person event and at the same time, incorporating those speakers into a stream out to a virtual audience) it becomes much more challenging. Since the platform has to take on a heavy load to merge the two streams for the online audience, the equipment needs in the room would be greater (large screen with both the remote speakers and slides, confidence monitor for in-person speakers to see the remote speakers). 

To both stream in speakers and stream out to a virtual audience would add considerable expense with the need for additional AV, extra staffing, and training of staff to enable. 

One of ACLEA’s largest considerations was ensuring that the in-person experience remained the focus of our final determination. How could we provide our in-person audience the benefits of live attendance that would justify the additional time and expense of traveling to Austin? What does in-person attendance look like if the speakers are streamed in remotely or pre-recorded? Would an in-person audience sitting in a room watching a video screen of remote speakers or videos provide the positive experience and benefits of other live in-person conferences? Additionally, communication between the remote speakers and in-person attendees would be difficult, and wouldn’t create the networking opportunities that are critical to being together at the event. 

Ultimately the question became a choice between streaming speakers into the Austin conference or creating a virtual event streaming content out to our members. Weighing the considerations, ACLEA determined that a virtual event in which the entire membership could benefit from the content and the interaction with colleagues better fulfills the ACLEA mission of serving continuing legal education professionals worldwide through leadership, community, education, and development.  

How do we ensure engagement with our online attendees—both with each other within the platform and with speakers and attendees at the in-person event?

We have all discovered that creating and encouraging community and networking can be especially challenging in the online and hybrid world in which we now find ourselves. ACLEA will continue to work with the planning committee and other volunteers to find new ways to engage our audiences, and create dialogue and participation across our membership. 

While it may be easier to ignore the related issues, we cannot “ignore this particular problem until it swims up and BITES US IN THE A**!”* Through analysis and discussion, ACLEA’s plan to move forward with the live in-person event with in-person speakers presenting, coupled with a virtual event streaming the majority of the content to a remote audience, will provide benefit to the largest percentage of our membership. 

Gina:
As we move through these COVID-infested waters, collaboration and open discussion are key to getting through the next conference, the next year, and the next challenge. 

Kristin:
Please join us in Austin or online with CE21 as we get back into the water!


*Jaws, Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice!

And the one tip I found that has the largest impact on the success or failure of an online webinar or virtual meeting from a technical standpoint . . . is also practice!

While the ABA has been vending online live webinars for years, the post-COVID world saw a significant increase in the number of online programs we offered. In addition to new programs, that also meant that we worked with hundreds of new speakers to deliver that content. And the most important thing we learned to best ensure success was testing and practicing with your speakers in the platform you will be using.

1. Make sure your speakers are in the setting they will use on the day of the event. For example, we had speakers testing from home who decided to go into the office for the actual presentation. VPN and firewall issues are common. The setup they use for the test should be exactly the same as the setup they use to present (same computer, same location, same connection, etc.)
2. Make sure that speakers have strong and uninterrupted internet access, wired if at all possible. And with so many still working from home, bandwidth strain is real. If your speaker, and their partner, and their kids, are all using their internet connection at the same time, connectivity strength can be compromised. Ask your speakers to have their families stay off the internet during actual presentation time. This is challenging with kids or partners working from home with competing meetings that may be occurring at the same time, but it will have a significant impact on the quality of the stream coming from your speaker.
3. Test with all of your speakers, even if they are “familiar” with the platform you are using. Zoom Meetings is different from Zoom Webinar, for example. Your speakers may not be aware of additional features of a platform you may be using: polling, pop-ups, codes, etc.
4. Test with all of your speakers, at the same time if you are able. They all need to understand how they will work together, determine signals for handoffs, who is advancing slides, who is using polling and discussing results, etc.
5. Test with all of your speakers, even if they have presented with you before. IT departments may make changes and updates that can affect connectivity, and they don’t often tell all staff. For example, recently none of our ABA staff could connect to our streaming platform if they were in the office. This was a year and a half after COVID began, and we had to work with our vender to set up connections and settings again. While this was resolved, if it had not been discovered before the webinar it would have prevented a number of staff (or think speakers) from joining the program for the presentation.

While this may not seem critical, time and again we experienced issues and delays with speakers only when they hadn’t been through our testing and practice scenarios. With a little practice, your webinars can run as professionally as a Carnegie performance!

“Our supreme court will allow credit by online learning through the end of the year, so we’re not doing in-person programs until after January 1.” This comment has bothered me since it was proclaimed by a CLE professional in early July—before the Delta variant was much of a thing. You might think, “well, that’s an obvious path to follow.” Allow me to dispute, disagree, and rant a bit about the folly of this mindset. From a marketing point of view, this is suicidal thinking.

What is the reason given for the delay in returning people to an in-person setting? It’s not health related, nor even pedagogical in any sense. It is because credit will be allowed for the alternative virtual presentations. It is because of credit.

What are you selling? It’s the primary question we must ask ourselves every day. In the issue at hand, since the reason is that credit is allowed otherwise, then the thing they are selling is credit. Without thought to whether there is a hunger in the marketplace for some human contact (at a safe distance), the decision was made to “stay virtual.” For the umpteenth time, allow me to point out that selling credit is a fool’s mission. Credit has no intrinsic value. To sell credit is to commoditize CLE. In other words, there is no difference between a $1 hour of credit and a $100 hour of credit—in the end, no matter what the cost, the customer ends up with an hour of credit. If THAT’s what you’re selling, then, you are selling a thing that your competition can give away for free—and they do.

Now, did my friend probably mean that they had decided to take the prudent steps to delay in-person programming due to health concerns? Quite likely. But that’s not what they said, so that’s not what was foremost in their mind. And that is the caution I issue here. Do not ever let credit be a consideration in your mission. It should, of course, be a given.

What, then, should be forefront in our daily thoughts about CLE?

• Professional improvement and advancement
• Value—you get more out than you put in
• Collegiality among peers
• Access (to subject-matter experts, judges, whoever)

Everyone in your organization should have this same mindset every day. Indeed, make sure that everyone in your organization understands that CLE is the acronym for continuing legal education and not some twisted moniker for credit (as in “I got my CLEs”).

I picked up my dogeared copy of Harry Beckwith’s Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing (get it if you don’t have it; read it again if you do) to see if Harry had anything to say on the issue and found a neat little chapter. Harry and his partner were working on copy for an ad campaign and getting nowhere. On their third day of the stalemate with the page, their creative director made the comment, “If it’s this hard to write the ad, the product is flawed.” Try it yourself. Write an ad for your service. Write a six-to-twelve word headline for that ad. If it takes you three days, rethink your service. Try it. Make it an office-wide exercise. I hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised, because if you’re not, then you’ve got lots of work ahead of you! Please note that a long-ago CLE boss of mine was IN LOVE with his theme “Get the Best for Less.” Having worked at K-Mart as a youth, I just hung my head. Do better than that.

“So, Mr. Smartypants,” you rightly observe, “what should we do?” I humbly (as IF) offer the following thoughts.

Be there.

You may not be able to personally attend every event your organization produces, but somebody should. And that somebody should have the authority, the knowledge, and the backbone to immediately dispatch any problem that occurs. Give them a number if you must (you can spend up to $1,000 to make a problem go away). That person should also have the presence to greet people when they arrive and to be accessible throughout the day. Someone should embody your organization and make your guests feel welcomed and catered to—every time.

Be consistent.

Dealing with governing boards and committees has never been my strong suit, but if you are in that position, your best tactic every time a new chair comes in would be to make sure that they know that your primary job is to provide continuity through the years. Yes, the chair’s personal “most important thing” might be an important topic like diversity training, or mental health training, or some trendy theme, but they need to know that your job is to make sure that the brand is the same this year as last and it will be so next year. It would help if you had that headline from the office exercise at this point. The chair’s ideas are welcome and will be acted upon given available resources, but they cannot change the core being of your shop. It will make your job easier to set those ground rules up front.

Be collaborative.

Recognize the contributions of your staff and your peers. Give credit freely to others. It costs you nothing and gains you much. If you’re in a leadership role, remember to ask for input—and ALWAYS start with the junior member of the group, or the person in the weakest position. They may have a great idea or see a flaw with some plan, but if the group’s leaders speak first, that junior team member’s reaction will likely be “they know more than me, I should just keep my mouth shut,” and you’ll miss that great idea.

I have veered widely from my original point, which is the following. Everything you do is marketing, even if it’s providing a colleague with your reasoning for doing something. Advertising is obvious, but picking program topics and plugging them into a calendar is marketing, how you answer the phone (and ANSWERING the phone) is marketing, responding to people is marketing. Internal memos are marketing, particularly if they motivate staff to carry out the mission. And everybody needs to know the mission!

Now, my last suggestion is a reading assignment—and one that I intend to pursue myself. Read, or re-read, the aforementioned Selling the Invisible and also David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man. What you will find in those pages will serve you far beyond your next project.

Henry Lake is President of The Professional Education Group. Prior to his run at P.E.G.®, he served as both Media Director and as Program Director for the South Carolina Bar CLE Division. Henry has served on the ACLEA Executive Committee and was Chair of the Santa Barbara Mid-Year Meeting – you’ll have to look up the year, he’s forgotten. Yes, at that meeting, Henry was responsible for Bodine Belasco, Comedy Magician and for the introduction of the Three Meat Closing Event Buffet. It was his high-water mark.