Are continuing legal education (CLE) course registrations up or down in 2009?
A lively conversation on the Association for Continuing Legal Education’s listserv (yes, listservs still exist, even occasionally useful) about this prompted the 2009 CLE Course Registrations: Up or Down? survey.
Over 70% of respondents were non-profit CLE Providers (see Figure 1) with online-only providers comprising less than 15%.
The trend for CLE registrations is clearly downward with only around 20% reporting an increase.
Figure 1
Live (classroom setting) courses overwhelmingly account for the scant increase that a few of the respondents reported. However, this should be viewed in context since providers of online-only CLE courses were not well represented.
Figure 2
Less than 50% of respondents engage social media in their marketing strategy. For those that do, Twitter is the platform of choice followed closely by Facebook with LinkedIn a distant third. [NOTE: Blogs were not included as a choice in the survey]
A surprising result was that using social media platforms to market courses had no significant positive impact in the number of registrations [Figures 3 and 4].
Figure 3
Figure 4
Additional conversations and comments suggest that conversely and somewhat logically, in-house programs at law firms and corporations are experiencing a spike in attendance, the result of shrinking travel and perhaps conference budgets.
Gina Roers weighed in with a provocative post, Trends in Registrations at CLE Events providing great insight and perspective. Her answer to “Are we seeing emerging trends?“, provides a summary of the survey results, commentary and conversations and also captures the concern of providers,
…I’d say no. At least not easily identifiable trends. Practice areas affected spread across the range…What’s making these situations so difficult from my perspective, is that it’s been very challenging to then plan resources…”
The legal profession has been severely impacted by the prolonged economic downturn and CLE providers are no exception. What trends and issues will emerge to weather the storm? Working creatively — with each other, attorneys and regulators — innovative solutions will emerge providing an ever improving and cost effective continuing legal education experience.
