Inside the Bar
No Free Lunch in Cyberspace
Technology's Real Cost
by George C. Brown,
State Bar executive director
If you were one of the 19,640
Wisconsin lawyers not logged onto the State Bar's first Web-enhanced CLE
program on Oct. 16, you missed history in the making. The two-hour
program, "Wisconsin Resources on the Internet," drew 60 registrants; 13
of whom were nonresident lawyers - State Bar members who live and work
outside Wisconsin, including Canada.
A "Web-enhanced" seminar is one that you "attend" and participate in
right from your office. The speaker's voice arrives over your telephone
for reliable, clear, and uninterrupted sound quality. The visual
information is delivered via the Internet on your desktop PC. The
speakers enhance their presentation by adding live, real-time Web site
examples, PowerPoint slides, and a variety of other written and visual
materials.
So, how did people like it? By and large, they thought it was great.
Two-thirds of the lawyers who responded to the survey rated the program
"very good" or "excellent" overall. "I thought it was great, very
convenient!" wrote one member. "Please make all of the CLE courses
available by telephone and/or computer," wrote another.
The convenience of this technology is unmistakable. You don't have to
get into your car to drive to the seminar, maybe pay for parking or a
more expensive lunch than you normally would have, then drive back to
your office or home. You save gas and time - and you can be back at work
a minute after the seminar is finished. The challenge is to make CLE
using new distance education technologies affordable and usable for all
Bar members.
Of course some participants experienced a few problems. A couple of
people had trouble logging on; for some, the program was difficult to
follow because the "screen changes were slower than the speaker
talking." These represent the continuing learning curve for using new
technologies.
The other learning curve is understanding that Internet delivery of
information is not free. The math shows that this seminar lost more than
$8,000. In addition to reaffirming that many seminars do not break even,
this experience demonstrates the fallacy that the Internet is "free."
Delivering CLE over the Internet entails the work of writers, editors,
planners, speakers, designers, technicians, customer service, and
administrative support staff. The technology infrastructure must be
built and maintained in-house, or outsourced. All of this costs money.
The Bar is facing the same challenges that all providers of information
over the Internet are facing - how to keep the end product affordable
and accessible for all our members.
As more and more services move to the Web, we need to recognize that
information delivered via the Internet is not free; the issue we need to
resolve is who pays for it and how.
Wisconsin
Lawyer
