My focus on the Board of Governors has been to further improve the strength of The Jacksonville Bar Association’s CLE programming.
Our goal has been to enable our members to meaningfully accumulate their required CLE credit hours right in their own backyard, via the Jax Bar. Go to Orlando, Tampa or South Florida to vacation, not to pursue professional education.
Eight years ago, Jake Schickel pioneered the Jax Bar’s ADR Practitioners Section to start its annual Mediators’ CME/CLE. The response was and continues to be overwhelmingly positive. Jacksonville area mediators are staying right here to get all of their CME hours.
To tap into similar needs across practice areas, The Jacksonville Bar Association is beginning to “annualize” its most popular seminars.
While it is still a work in progress, the Board of Governors is contemplating the following annual CLE calendar:
• February: Ehrlich Trial Advocacy Seminar (full day)
• April/May: Ethics (Professionalism, mental health, substance abuse, etc.) (half day)
• June: Mediators’ CME/CLE (full day)
• September: Family Law (full day)
• November: Criser Transactional Law Seminar (full day)
The Jax Bar will continue to offer other seminars throughout the year, including diversity and the wildly popular Judicial Sidebar CLE lunch events.
Our committees will continue to plan smaller, focused seminars and lunch seminar events.
In short, the Bar’s plan for CLE programming remains robust, even more so after annualizing our bigger seminars.
Regarding this article’s title, hopefully you are aware of our enhanced “value-added” full membership upgrade.
Standard membership entitles you to attend luncheons at no cost, join committees, network with fellow members, participate in member-only events and have access to member pricing for Jax Bar seminars, social events and vendor services.
At an upgrade cost of $270 in addition to the standard membership dues, your full membership gives you prepaid (i.e., free) entry to any live Jax Bar event — social, live CLE events and golf tournament.
So how is any of this like peas and carrots? By delivering to our membership consistent and dependable annual CLE seminars, The Jacksonville Bar Association is further amplifying the value gained via full membership.
At $25-$35 per credit hour, attending just one of these multicredit annual CLE programs recoups nearly the entire expense of the full membership upgrade. Attend two or more and you’re far ahead of the cost curve.
Jacksonville Bar members now can meaningfully plan their CLE needs around our “annualized” CLE calendar, can save travel expenses to pursue seminars, can avoid being caught off-guard come reporting deadline time and can see an even greater value to the full membership upgrade. Now, go enjoy your veggies.
Website update for online CLE library
Last year I wrote to you about our plans to have Jacksonville Bar CLE videos available via our website.
The goal was to provide our members with access to CLE programming that they were not able to attend in person, for whatever reason.
Generally, The Florida Bar’s CLE credit approval lasts for 18 months, so this online seminar library will not just be a source of general education, but also a means of accumulating needed CLE credits.
This resource will provide additional revenue to The Jacksonville Bar Association and reduce the need to raise membership dues in the future.
After a prolonged period of technical difficulties, I am pleased to say this project is nearly ready to launch.
Our recent Diversity (January) and Ehrlich Trial Advocacy (February) seminars were videorecorded and digitally uploaded.
Our webmaster is creating the portal link and shopping cart on our website, and we intend for our online video CLE library to be “open for business” in the next few months.
We will continue to videorecord all annual CLE events and many of the shorter seminar events and upload them to the website.
While standard and full members will have to pay to use it, the online video CLE library is yet another way The Jacksonville Bar Association is improving the strength of its CLE programming.
Be on the lookout for the “grand opening” announcement coming soon.