Wisconsin Lawyer
Vol. 81, No. 12, December 2008

Inside the Bar

Faster, Cheaper, Better

by George C. Brown,
State Bar executive director

Don’t look to your mailbox next month for your copy of Inside the Bar, the State Bar’s monthly newsletter. It won’t be there. Instead, look to your electronic mailbox twice a month for the new State Bar newsletter WisBar Inside Track. With it, you will get more timely news than you did with the printed version.

Why the change? Because the times demand it. Last spring, the Madison newspaper The Capital Times moved to online delivery. And just recently, the venerable Christian Science Monitor moved from print to Internet delivery of its news. For commercial publications, some of this move is driven by advertising dollars. But advertising follows the reader, and more and more of you are accessing your news electronically.

For the State Bar, there are two drivers for moving to electronic delivery. The first is that by eliminating the space restrictions inherent in printing words on paper, we gain the flexibility for a greater variety of content. The second is that we save the rising costs of printing and mailing a monthly newsletter – money we can redirect to other programs and services.

However, it is the change in how you receive information that has allowed us to make this change. According to the State Bar’s 2007 Technology in Practice survey: 90 percent of the respondents believe it is appropriate for the State Bar to share information about programs, products, and services by email; 75 percent access the Internet using broadband connects and only 4 percent still use dial-up connections; 66 percent already receive electronic newsletters from the State Bar or other sources; and 21 percent subscribe to news feeds.

For most of its 25-year existence, the State Bar newsletter has focused principally on news about the association itself. At the same time the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine focuses on substantive articles about the law and lawyers, with additional coverage on the practice of law – professional ethics, managing risk, using technology, and operating your law business. The new electronic newsletter provides the opportunity to greatly expand coverage of state legal news and the practice of law, to deliver timelier and more frequent court-related news, and to provide quick feedback on developing issues.

So beginning in January, look to your email inbox twice a month for WisBar Inside Track, delivering news affecting your practice and information about the State Bar. If you have not provided us your email address, or forgot to contact us when you changed it, you can receive the newsletter by sending your email address to service@wisbar.org or calling the State Bar customer service at (800) 444-9404.

Wisconsin Lawyer