Our charitable CLE education initiative benefits charitable causes. Courses are pre-approved by the Florida Bar and our speakers are the top experts in their field.
Upcoming CLE Events
Understand the basics regarding trademark filings, understand the common mistakes, and prevent ethical violations arising out of trademark law. Pre-approved by the Florida Bar for 1.0 hour CLE. 60 minutes. Speaker: Steven Forte.
Why we started this
Since I was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1995, I’ve spoken countless times a conferences, groups and other events. I’ve always taken these engagements very seriously and committed resources and time to prepare. I have usually had travel and hotel stipends which were a rounding error in view of my time commitment.
Live Advertorials
The legal education and conference industry has adopted a disturbing trend. Pay to speak. I am hard to offend, but having a conference organizer ask me to prepare an hour presentation on a cutting edge topic then try to monetize my participation was an eye-opener. I spoke with colleagues in other legal disciplines and they relayed similar experiences. One close friend and former general counsel for a multi-billion dollar organization was only offered a partial discount on a conference he was speaking at.
Something has to change. The best and brightest are not going to devote their time, wisdom and expertise to pay to speak. Those CLE presentations are essentially live advertorials. Sure, conferences and events cost money but if you want to bring in the best speakers there has to be an alternative.
Our Solution – Charitable CLE Education
My partners at Smith & Hopen and I discussed this and decided to innovate an alternative….charitable CLE education. We only bring in the highest level of legal authority to speak before colleagues and donate 100% of the voluntary contributions to charitable organizations. There is never a pay to speak opportunity at our events. Speakers are only selected on merit. Consequently, a typical speaker will have at least ten years of legal experience, hold board certifications from the bar and an AV-rating from Martindale Hubbell.
We create registrations for the CLE events through EventBrite and all money generated gets deposited through ACH to the target charity. It never even touches our organization.
We offer an opportunity for the best attorneys to share their expertise before their colleagues while helping those less fortunate. We hope you will support our mission.