Solo Practice

West Legal Ed and Macs

By Michael Grossman

Today I surfed over to West Legal Ed and looked at their CLE selections. They really do have a fantastic assortment and if you’re looking to learn a new area of the law, this seems like a great place to do it. Althought the price tag for a yearly subscription is steep, it might be a necessary evil.

Anyhow, I gave them a ringy-dingy to test drive the service and perhaps receive a 20% discount at the end of the demo had I chosen to subscribe. I reached someone on the phone, began the five minute demonstration, and all was going swimmingly until the fellow on the other end of the line learned I was on a Mac.

“Oh, no. This won’t work with Macs.”

I couldn’t believe my ears! With reports of attorney and other professionals switching to Macs in droves, West has designed a website that will not work with Macs?! I’ve never heard of such a thing. Why would they limit their audience? The number of law students who use Macs, alone, would appear to be an incentive for West to upgrade their technology.

Apparently their videos will not work with any browser other then Microsoft Internet Explorer. And because IE is no longer made in a Mac flavor, we appear to be SOL.

The fellow I was speaking with at West was sympathetic - he called the tech department to learn whether I could see videos if running Parallels, XP and then IE. He was told that I would be able to play the videos, but West would not be able to tell that I was viewing the videos, and hence would not receive CLE credit.

Bollocks.

I have a hard time believing this. If anyone has experience running a Mac with West Legal Ed, I’d love to hear about how you do it, or in the alternative, if you’ve found that it is indeed difficult or impossible.

Full post as published by Practical Lawyering on October 12, 2007 (boomark / email).