Legal Commentary

On the road again..... catchin' up with the
in-box:

* Upcoming Webinars:

-- TutorPro Ltd. is offering TutorAuthor NG, designed to help law firms create online educational programs. There are six sessions scheduled this summer.

-- Guille Rayala of Workshare is inviting you to a Workshare/Microsoft webcast on automating enterprise contract management. It will be held June 10, at 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. East coast time.

* Congrats to Jonathan Ezor and the gang at the Tourou Law Center's Institute of Business, Law & Technology. They are celebrating their 5th year anniversary with a bash on June 18 at the Long Island facility. Details here: _invitation.pdf

* Also celebrating a year 5 milestone is "Excited Utterances," a newsletter created by editors Joy London and Sean Hockings. It covers KM, tech, publishing, blogging, open source, and web 2.0 topics, all aimed specifically at the legal community. Check out the current issue here, which has subscription info: Download llneu_149_23_may_2008.pdf

* The San Jose Mercury News is going digital, check it out here.

* United Airlines' Red Carpet Club now offers free wi-fi -- it's still from T-Mobile but you no longer have to be a subscriber, you can simply use your RCC membership number to access it. UAL is also following suit of other airline clubs, and now you can purchase a 1-day pass online for $50 -- that can come in handy as gifts or if you have extra guests with you.

* Deborah Novachick checks in with a report about her efforts to raise money for the Tall Ships Education project.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed. By the last report we raised $1,800. So wonderful, wonderful. This has been a great experience for me.  It is a lot of work to get it all organized, but then you get to e-mail everyone, and hear from so many people.  Very much a community experience.  I am big on community.

Stayed in roughly the same geographic area all my life, went to college and lived among a very dedicated community of educators, stayed in the same career and industry all my life, and got involved in a lot of community activities. Started in kindergarten when a neighbor who was an elementary school teacher rounded up all the little neighborhood girls to start a Blue Birds group. We all stayed together from Blue Birds, to Campfire Girls, to Jr. High Campfire Girls. Then we went on to sports, cheerleading, student office, peer counseling, and, not surprisingly, many of us ended up in professions like counseling, consulting, lawyering, teaching, real estate, and nursing.

For a bunch of little girls we had some amazing adventures (at 11 I broke my foot when tobogganing with two of the most adventurous girls in Lake Tahoe -- between a Propane tank and a telephone pole ? don?t try this at home -- and then I messed around on my cast so much that I had to wear assorted casts for SIX MONTHS ? became known, affectionately, as ?the gimp? at school, but hey, for 6 months I got out of classes early and had someone carrying my books!) 

We kept widening our circle of friends, helping each other, and adding new mentors until we grew up.  Then we continued to seek out mentors.  And eventually we found ourselves mentoring others.  I can?t imagine what my life would be like without learning firsthand (experiential education) how warm and generous people can be.  And what we can accomplish as a team, a community. 

I realize now that we were pretty poor as kids.  But I had no idea at the time.  We seemed to be surrounded by people who had so much to share. 

I hope the girls at the Tall Ship Education come away with that feeling that so many things are possible.  I have been prepping for a speech on generational differences in October, so I understand better now that outlooks can be very different depending on the times one grows up in.

But the answer seems to be diversity and communication.  And that was exactly what my integrated public schools, the teachers, and mentors showed us when we were kids. And it is what the ?Experiential Education? approach behind TSEA?s programs teaches. TSEA creates an environment where a highly diverse community is intent on a very important goal that benefit to the community (i.e., not to sink the ship and all one?s shipmates And then the magic happens.