CLE Invitations

Last year, I was lucky enough to find out about a couple of free CLE's put on by law firms for their clients. I attended one and wasn't able to attend the other. The one I attended was by far the nicest CLE I have attended. I had stumbled across an announcement for it a few days beforehand and one of my friends called to see if they still had room. They did and let us sign up for it.

I parked somewhere near the venue, that cost less, and was given a free parking coupon for the venue's own lot with my materials. If I had only known! They opened with fruit, pastries, coffee, tea and juice. At breaktime the juice had been replaced with soda and power bars, granola bars and yogurt-covered pretzels had been added. Lunch was served in a separate room and was very good. I don't remember anything except the salad and dessert bar.

There were two topics so we divided by area of specialty. The speakers were attorneys from the sponsoring firm and they really knew their stuff. At their hourly billable rate, that's to be expected. I was quite impressed with the materials they provided and learned a lot during this CLE.

What I didn't realize is that now I'm on the invitation list for both the CLE I attended and the one at another firm for which I canceled in the end. I have received both e-mail and printed invitations for the CLE I attended and a printed invitation for the one I didn't.

Since I have already reported, I'm not sure I'll attend this one; the other takes place after the clock starts ticking for my next reporting period, so I plan to attend.

This is the kind of thing you can find out about through other attorneys or by looking at law firm webpages. These are both large firms whose CLE's are directed to one of their specialty areas. I'm really excited to have gotten invitations this year; I feel less like an interloper now.