CLE's at Big Firms

I previously mentioned that last year I had attended a CLE that was meant for the firms clients. I found it online two days beforehand and discussed it with a friend who called to see if it was okay for us to sign up. We were assured they had room for us and attended.

Now we're on their mailing list and this year we received invitations, one of which was via e-mail and said to forward to interested colleagues. That only applies to their clients; my friend forwarded the invitation to a colleague on her document review project, who tried to register and was rejected on the grounds that the CLE is for their clients.

The CLE isn't for over a month yet and therein may lie the difference; at this point, it's still possible that their clients will sign up for the event. Last year, we learned about the event two days beforehand, when they knew they had committed to space for a certain number of participants and were paying for lunch for fewer people than had signed up. The other possible reason I can think of is that there was turnover in staff and someone new turned down her registration.

Knowing we're not the targeted audience, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to disclose the client events I'm lucky enough to attend; however, there's no reason you can't ask your contacts about CLE's at their firm or google around and see if you turn up anything interesting. If you do find a client event, I'd wait until the end of the sign-up period and call to ask.