By David P. Whelan" [This article appeared in Law Office Computing, December / January 2003]

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Lawyers are bombarded with information on how the latest gadget or software can help them practice better, make more money or live a better life. We often spend so much time focused on the tools we own that we miss some of the other powerful resources we pay for through bar membership dues. If you are a member of a bar association — national, state, local or specialty — there is a good chance your bar has resources available to you for free or at a discount. These resources can range from free technology consultations to online access to information and tools on the bar association’s Web site. While technology isn’t the only benefit you can receive from your bar association, make sure you are taking advantage of these resources to help your practice.

The size of the bar association doesn’t always determine the sophistication of the offering. Some small county and metropolitan bar associations are incredibly nimble at securing services and providing resources for their members. Larger bar associations often have greater financial and human resources to invest in technology for their members’ benefit. This investment might mean an enhanced Web site, a wider choice of continuing legal education (CLE) content or an array of discounts on products and services for your office.

Whatever the size of the association, you will find a variety of free and members-only resources at your local and state bar associations that will help you better manage your practice and do more with technology and with the law.

Technology Support — Practice Management Advisors

Lawyers often think of a Web site or software and hardware discounts when they think of bar associations and technology. However, one of the most powerful resources your bar association might provide is a human resource. A majority of the state bar associations have a practice management advisor who can handle initial questions about technology use. These practice managers come from a variety of backgrounds, but all are familiar with the latest technology and know expert consultants in your geographic area. Some practice managers are consultants themselves and the bar has negotiated a discount for members to use their services. Others are staff of the association, providing technological assistance both to the association and to members.

One of the associations that has taken this concept the furthest is the Allegheny County Bar Association (ACBA) in Pittsburgh where a new Services Division offers technology consulting and other services to members. Lawyers needing video deposition, court presentation or document publishing resources also can take advantage of the ACBA Services Inc.

The New York State Bar Association has created an online service where lawyers and technologists can interact at Lpmforum.com. Articles, discussion forums and discounted business publications from Harvard Business School Publishing are all part of the offering for its members.

You might ask under what circumstances should you use practice management advisors. Think of them as your first line of technology information. Although there is a broad selection of legal technology products available, typically a particular lawyer or law firm has one special need to answer. A call to a practice manager will put you on the road to finding that personalized answer and can reduce the time spent calling sales staff at multiple vendors or on background reading. These technologists can save time (and money) by pointing you to the best solution possible, even if it’s not the technology or brand you originally had in mind. Many of the practice managers have law firm experience, either as lawyers or information technology (IT) staff, and can apply their knowledge to your particular needs.

Staying current on new technology is a nice diversion from the practice of law, if you need one. When you know what products are hot or what topics are being discussed, you might feel more in tune with legal technology. Law practice management comes in a variety of forms in bar associations: technology committees, law practice management committees or sections, and more. Through one of these law practice management venues, you will have an avenue to participate more directly in your state or local bar association. The publications, meetings and CLE these groups sponsor might be the most relevant to your practice of any information out there. They can speak informatively on the nuances in your particular jurisdiction, geographical region or your law firm’s demographics.

Web Sites

Another overlooked resource is the bar association Web site. Many bar associations are renowned for providing substantive content on legal issues. They also can provide tools to assist your practice, whether it’s in saving time by providing online membership payment or address changes, or by aggregating information customized to your preferences. It might not seem important, but having self-help or personalized Web sites allow you to manage your association information when you have the time, not just when there is a bar staff member at the other end of the telephone.

Many bar associations are going beyond just the basics of being an information resource and are providing interactive tools and exclusive members-only content.

Members-only Access and Customization

Members-only access isn’t a new concept to anyone who travels the Internet, but bar associations have been slow adopters of restricted access to areas on Web sites. Many bar associations have opted not to place content behind a password-protection scheme, with the rationale being lawyers don’t need the extra hassle of remembering another password to get access.

Hassle or not, members-only, password-protected areas of association Web sites are going to become increasingly common. As more personalized information becomes available to members, the easiest way to connect with the right information is through secured pages.

When you visit your bar association’s Web site, be sure to look for the members-only area. It might have additional content or access to your membership and CLE information hidden behind it just waiting for you to take a look. For example, the Oklahoma Bar Association hosts “my okbar” for its members, and the State Bar of Texas has outsourced this function for its members at “MyTexasBar,” powered by West Group’s FindLaw.

Online Publications

Until recently, a visit to your bar association might have yielded just the headlines or brief abstracts of monthly journals and other newsletters the association published. Increasingly, this content is going online in full text so you can read past and current issues. This has been great material for members-only content because bar associations want to make your membership as valuable as possible.

Some bar associations make their content available to anyone who visits the Web site. This is simpler than investing in a password scheme and creates a content-rich site to boot. Local bar associations are especially adept at taking advantage of this opportunity. For example, the Cobb County Bar Association in Georgia has published the past three years’ issues of their monthly newsletter online, free to the public in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format.

These bar associations create additional value for lawyers by providing free access to information that might otherwise not be in a research database or received by you.

You also will find information that isn’t available anywhere else. On the superbly redesigned State Bar of California Web site, you can access e-briefs and the California Bar Journal. California lawyers can benefit from the monthly trial briefs, arranged by case subject in the online journal, which give a slice of the case and the verdict.

The Missouri Bar Association has an outstanding bar Web site, which hosts a lot of resources available to the public, but it also has gathered together resources behind the members-only gateway. The bar offers Missouri case briefs and full-text searchable journals for lawyers, as well as other resources for a curious public.

Online Communication

As lawyers increasingly rely on e-mail for communication and information, it’s worth mentioning the depth of resources bar associations make available that can deliver information right to your inbox. These fall into two categories and your bar associations probably offer at least one. They are the discussion list and the e-mail broadcast.

The discussion list is where subscribers send e-mail to a general address, and it’s disseminated to all other subscribers. Unlike a broadcast list, which is a one-way communication, a discussion list is much like a conversation conducted via e-mail. Commonly referred to by the name of the leading discussion software, Listserv, these lists exist at many bar associations. Topics range from substantive legal issues to practice management and technology to substantive bar committees.

An example is the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Lawtech list, one of more than 1,000 lists hosted by the ABA found at http://mail.abanet.org/archives/lawtech.html, which provides a forum for discussing legal technology. What makes these lists special is they are often populated by experts. By subscribing and monitoring the conversation, you can pick up some top notch tips and information. Many, including the ABA’s Lawtech list, are open to members and nonmembers.

The e-mail broadcast is a list, which you can join or subscribe to as part of your bar membership, that sends messages to which you can’t reply as part of a discussion. The messages should include substantive information — cases, opinions, news — that will help you in your practice. The e-mail is an update, arriving in your inbox to be read when you have time. They typically arrive on a schedule, set by you or the list owner, so that on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, you receive the broadcast message.

Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA) members who are not already participating in the many e-mail broadcasts offered by the ISBA should visit the Association’s Web site and sign up. There you will find one of the broadest offerings of e-mail broadcasts, ranging from Illinois and 7th Circuit case digests to substantive practice updates and legislative alerts. If you are not a member, that is not a problem because the ISBA will allow you to purchase a subscription. Many bar associations have resources like these e-mail alerts that are definitely worth the nominal cost to gain access.

Online Collaboration

One relatively recent addition to the toolkit offered by bar associations is the online collaboration environment. It takes many forms but a collaboration system typically involves tools that allow lawyers to work together in real-time in a way that goes beyond an e-mail discussion. These systems usually include a discussion conference, a chat room, a place to store shared documents, and the most advanced offerings provide audio and video conferencing components. When used properly, these can be a great way to minimize face-to-face meetings and increase your participation in bar activities. For example, lawyers in Nebraska can participate in the State Bar Association’s Web board conferences to collaborate with other members of that unified bar.

Professional Resources

Online Research

The Ohio State Bar Association pioneered an online research product called Casemaker, and it has been adopted by a number of states, including Connecticut, Nebraska and North Carolina. Six state bars — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Idaho, Indiana and Vermont — will join the consortium in the near future. If you belong to a state bar that is now part of the Casemaker consortium, then you have access to a research tool incorporating state and federal cases, statutes, rules books and even municipal codes in your jurisdiction.

North Carolina Bar Association members can research state court opinions dating back to 1939, statutes and administrative code, federal circuit and district courts since 1995, municipal codes for Charlotte, Raleigh and Durham, and much more from both state and federal sources.

Many bar associations also have negotiated discount rates for members for online legal research, whether with Loislaw, Westlaw or LexisNexis. Members of the Maine State Bar Association receive discounts and access to all three vendors’ products.

A common resource provided by bar Web sites is a hyperlinked index to state-related resources. Some bar associations take this a step further and host the materials themselves. This provides rich, reliable information for all lawyers. One valuable project is that of the Alaska Bar Association’s unreported opinion database. Spurred by a member committee recommendation, you can keyword search or browse recent unpublished opinions from Alaska State courts.

E-mail Aliases and Accounts

A recent addition to the offerings of many bar associations is the e-mail alias. You can think of it as an electronic post office box. People can send mail to your post office box, but they don’t necessarily know what your physical address is. An e-mail alias gives you a professional e-mail address (such as you@yourstatebar.org) that provides a location for your correspondents to send messages. When a message goes to your alias, the software managing that alias automatically forwards the message to your “real” e-mail address. For example, a message sent to you@yourstatebar.org would forward directly to your inbox at iluv2sue@hotmail.com.

It might sound like it’s only a benefit to sneaks, but if you switch law firms or e-mail service providers, you will get a new e-mail address. If you are using an e-mail alias, you can change the “real” e-mail address without affecting your alias. New messages sent to you@yourstatebar.org will be forwarded to whatever new e-mail address you are using, such as jcratchit@scrooge.com, no matter how often you change it.

Members of the State Bar of Arizona can click on “myAZBar.org” on the state bar’s Web site, and manage their e-mail alias on their personalized Web portal.

Online CLE and Tracking

The phrase “online continuing legal education” might immediately put you off, but the state bar associations are trying to use the online format to get you to attend any CLE, online or not.

Some lawyers enjoy the convenience of online seminars, dubbed “webinars” by some, and some are required to participate online. Others prefer the experience of being in the same room as the speaker and fellow lawyers for their CLE requirements. Increasingly, bar associations are providing calendars of all CLE events online whether they are online events or not. You can check the calendar for interesting topics and, in many cases, sign up and pay for the CLE all at the same time.

The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis provides its members with a dynamic CLE calendar, outlines of upcoming courses and the ability to register online. Web-wary visitors can click on an icon to see a printable registration form, complete with all the course details that can be printed and faxed directly to the bar.

As with practice managers, the offline CLE offerings are just as important as what you get online. Bar associations are aggressively targeting lawyers (members and nonmembers) with CLE that can be taken live, over the phone, on the Internet or downloaded to a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

Tennessee Bar Association members can get a discount when they sign up for PDA or Web-based CLE on the bar association’s Web site. They know attorneys want to take CLE in their preferred format, and that format might not be the same for every class.

Large legal publishers also have swung into the game, creating clearinghouses for CLE, and many bar associations are taking advantage of the services. On one hand, they use the publishers as distributors of the bar’s own CLE. On the other hand, they negotiate a discount for access by members to both your bar’s CLE and CLE courses produced by other bars that are hosted by the publisher. It gives you a broader course catalog than you might have been aware could be offered by your bar association.

The online offerings are beneficial for a number of reasons. Although you miss out on the collegial aspects of physically being with other lawyers, that is offset by the ability to take the course whenever you like. Increasingly these courses combine audio of the presentation synchronized with the presentation slides themselves. In addition, you are often given the option, or in some cases required to download the substantive materials related to the course. The result is a personalized tutorial on the particular aspect of law practice that you need when you need it.

Using your bar association as the gateway for the CLE course will give you a greater choice of courses and discounts on those that interest you.

An important part of CLE is getting credit and reporting it to your accrediting body. Bar associations are looking for ways to help you and are starting to provide CLE credit reports.

The Alaska Bar Association provides members with access to CLE records from the past three years, as maintained by the bar. These might not include all of the CLE you have taken, but provide an easy way to see what CLE courses you still might need.

Raising the Bar

You might have thought of your bar association primarily in its print or meeting form. Increasingly, though, your bar association memberships can give you access to a variety of useful tools, resources, discounts and other information — for no extra charge. All of these resources are additional services to the typical services you expect from your bar association, like networking, meetings and referral directories.

Whatever bar association you belong to, you should investigate their technology-related offerings and give them input on the resources that make your membership more valuable.

David Whelan, a lawyer and librarian, is director of the ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center, a consulting resource for lawyers interested in using technology.