The first ever in-world CLE (Continuing Legal Education) was held yesterday at the SL Bar Association offices. The turn out was strong with approximately 30 attendees. SLBA President ‘Solomon Cortes’ (David Naylor) presented a 90 minute talk on “Virtual World Legal Issues”. CLE credit is very important to lawyers because they have to take a certain number of CLE credits each year to maintain bar memberships — and these seminars can be expensive. I have been to CLE’s with registration fees in the several-hundred-dollar range. This is a barrier to making the law accessible to the public, since non-lawyers almost never attend due to the cost.
This was one of the better CLE’s I have attended. The advantages of having a Second Life CLE over a traditional CLE are three fold:
- The virtual environment enabled a chat room function for the speaker to field questions during the presentation. I have seen this tried in first life when Beth Kanter used twitter at NTC to gain instant feedback on her speed geeking social networking case study panel. This implementation was even smoother here when everyone could read the text stream. The interaction of the group was much more active then many CLE’s I have attend. The chat channel along with the less formal environment allowed people to speak up.
- The diversity of participants was amazing with participants form all over the US and Europe possibly other areas. There were lawyers, law students, librarians and general members of the public.
- The cost, $0, is amazing.
The main topics covered included tax law, contracts, copyright, trademark, privacy, crime, and ownership of virtual goods. This CLE was an intro to major virtual issues; future CLE’s by the SL Bar will focus on particular topics. I look forward to attending a few. Here is the schedule:
- July 22, 2008, 12:00 noon
“Intellectual property enforcement in virtual worlds,” Juris Amat
1 hour CLE Credit (California)
Click here for more details and to register - July 29, 2008, 12:00 noon
“Internet fraud,” Theophan Paine
1 hour CLE Credit (California)
Click here for more details and to register - September 9, 2008, 12:00 noon
“Trademark infringement in virtual worlds,” Legal Writer
1 hour CLE Credit (California)
Click here for more details and to register - September 16, 2008, 12:00 noon
“Legal research on the (free) internet,” Cat Galileo
1 hour CLE Credit (California) (approval pending)
Click here for more details and to register
Please feel free to contact me in SL my name is Sarterus Mensing. Freedom for IP also has an in-world membership group which is free to join.
