Tech Committee outline growth of LegalFuel: The Practice Resource Center of The Florida Bar
LegalFuel: The Practice Resource Center of The Florida Bar continues to grow and is steadily adding new content to help lawyers deal with all aspects of managing a modern practice, according to the Bar’s Standing Committee on Technology.
“The analytics data shows that LegalFuel is visited quite often by our members,” Practice Management Advisor Jamie Moore reported at the Bar’s Fall Meeting October 18, held virtually this year. “The website [legalfuel.com] averages over 54,000 unique visits a month, with over 10,000 visits a month for our CLE content.”
Florida Bar President Gary Lesser joined the call to discuss his vision for building out the Bar’s mentoring program and how technology will play a huge role.
“Our goal is to help newer lawyers have more professional development as well as greater access to legal services,” Lesser said. “Technology will be an important part of the mentoring program, and this committee is central to what we are doing. LegalFuel is one of our primary resources and I thank you all for the work.”
Bar President-elect Scott Westheimer, a member of the Board of Governors Technology Committee, thanked the committee for its commitment to putting informative information on the LegalFuel site, which includes a vast trove of free documents, CLE, live webinars, and other resources to help lawyers deal with all aspects of practice management from how to establish an office to trust accounting, cyber security, insurance, and health and wellness.
“LegalFuel is the engine that drives the train,” Westheimer said. “Please keep putting new content on the website, it’s invaluable to our members.”
Westheimer also discussed his committee’s efforts to update the member portal on the Bar’s website.
“We’re trying to make the private portal much more user-friendly for our members,” he said. “We’ve been working hard on remote practices and getting those updated. Our Tech Hotline is also up and running with a 99% satisfaction rate.”
The Florida Bar Tech Helpline was added to the Member Benefits lineup earlier this year to offer routine remote services, including basic troubleshooting, operating system support, and technical setup for home and remote offices to the membership. The service is primarily promoted to solo and small-firm practitioners who are less likely to be able to afford their own IT service but is available to all Florida Bar members in good standing that need non-emergency, remote computer, software, and related technology support.
Committee Chair Kevin Johnson discussed the appointment of new leadership positions and subcommittee chairs and appointed Tech Committee liaisons to other committees and sections within The Florida Bar that deal with technology.
“When we talk about where we are headed, we have to work better with other areas of the Bar that have a technology focus,” Johnson said.
The goal for liaisons is to prepare monthly summaries of what each group is working on and what their needs are. Appointments were made to the City, County, and Local Government Law Section, the Solo and Small Firm Section, the Consumer Protection Law Committee, and the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section.
The summaries will be compiled by committee member Pamela Martini who will then report back to the committee at its next meeting.
The Tech Committee also doubled down on its commitment to cybersecurity education. LegalFuel is currently working on adding CLE courses for cybersecurity that will better help lawyers in their business practice.
“Cybersecurity remains our main priority,” Johnson said.
The scope and function of the Committee on Technology are to interact regularly with LegalFuel to assure that technology tools for lawyers and educational assistance concerning technology related to practice management are readily available to Florida lawyers.
