Listservs or Web sites?
Bars create electronic information sources
by Dan Rubin
In
an age where information can be gathered from millions of sources,
bar associations are learning that they can play a key role in
providing information to their members. By creating Web sites
and listservs-e-mail discussion groups-for member use, bar associations
are becoming conduits of exchange for legal information.
"Our members say they get tremendous value out of e-mail
discussion groups," said Nancy Dugan, sections manager and
listserv moderator for the American Trial Lawyers Association.
"We often get e-mails from members saying 'This alone is
worth my dues.'"
Speaking at August's NABE Annual Meeting in Chicago, Dugan and
Jim Calloway, director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's management
assistance program, discussed the various ways bar associations
are spearheading the exchange of information among their members.
The American Trial Lawyers Association has nearly 75 listservs
active-30 public groups and 45 private listservs that are open
to section members only, Dugan said. In these listservs, everything
from trial strategy to legal research is discussed. Of the public
listservs, the 18 based on trial strategy are the most popular.
"Being a trial lawyer's group, we see a lot of discussion
of trial strategy," Dugan said. "Requests for facts
[and] needs for experts are often discussed." Among the public
groups, membership ranges from 150 to 3,000, with the medical
malpractice group being the largest.
So much trial strategy is discussed that members are constantly
on the lookout for "mole" participants - defense lawyers
who monitor the listserv to gain insight on how plaintiff lawyers
are planning to try their cases.
"There is a lot of talk about 'moles' on the listservs, and
we constantly monitor it," Dugan said, adding, though, that
conversations do not breach any confidentiality requirements.
The benefit of these listservs cannot be understated, said Dugan,
who estimates that 95 percent of all questions on a listserv get
answered. "About 75 percent of the time, the answer is sent
back to the entire list," she said.
Setting up listservs requires a good amount of planning, Dugan
said.
"If you are thinking about doing it, your first step is to
carefully plan out what topics will get a discussion group,"
she explained; if topics compete or are too broad or narrow, the
groups can collapse due to confusion or lack of interest.
Once planning is complete, bar executives need to figure out which
software vendor they will use to monitor and control the listservs.
L-Soft is the largest company that sells prepackaged solutions,
but there are other companies out there as well.
Running a listserv isn't necessarily expensive, but it requires
staff time to monitor discussions, respond to inquiries, and make
sure the system is up and running, Dugan said. Her job as sections
manager did not include official time to be spent on listservs,
but those duties eventually were added to her job description.
Are Web sites a better option?
On the other side of communicating electronically to its members,
the Oklahoma bar decided to set up a Web site called oba.net,
which is a depository for documents, CLE, Oklahoma Supreme Court
filings, journal articles, and member posts. Also included are
recent court decisions, which members upload to the Web site.
The service costs around $8 per month, Calloway said. Around 700
Oklahoma lawyers are currently signed up for the service. The
biggest financial perk for members is free access to last year's
CLE courses, which would normally cost $60 to $100 per course.
Members can also upload files, but the Oklahoma bar screens the
documents for viruses and content. The process usually takes a
week, Calloway said.
"These types of Web sites are perfectly positioned to handle
lawyer demands, because lawyers are in constant need of a steady
stream of information," he said. "These Web sites are
going to happen one way or another, and as the bar, we are in
a unique position to do it."
Web sites have an advantage over listservs, Calloway said, because
they can organize topics.
"You can arrange things, unlike listservs, which just fill
your inbox with clutter," he explained.
Most surprising, he said, is members' usage patterns.
"Everybody assumes lawyers are using the file service, but
the message boards are really key," Calloway said. "We
get mostly legal questions … How does Judge X want things
done, those types of questions. But there are also community-related
topics and humor, which is fine because it can be put in its own
place."
The biggest challenge the Oklahoma bar faced was getting new content
for the site, which began in 1995 on CompuServe and moved to the
Web in early 1999.
"The biggest hurdle is that members are so time-challenged
between their career responsibilities and families," Calloway
said. "If all we offered was a bunch of disconnected messages,
it wouldn't be worth their time. So we had to spend a lot of time
making sure there was fresh content every day and people's questions
got answered."
Once the site got rolling, Calloway said, members would fill in
the content with their own questions and answers. In addition,
Calloway spends about an hour checking out news stories from other
sites and posting links on oba.net.
"The great thing about the Web is that the content is already
there; you just have to organize it," he said.
