Not long after I wrote the post declaring that the future of online CLE is free, I headed to San Francsico for a meeting of the Association for Continuing Legal Education (ACLEA).

Pro tip: if you want to find out who in your industry is reading your blog, write a controversial post just before heading to an industry meeting. I was humbled to meet readers, many of whom approached me specifically to talk about the post. In fact, I’ve been joking with colleagues that I haven’t updated my blog because I’m a little intimidated by the caliber of the readers I didn’t even know I had until the meeting.

Talking about the post was helpful because it revealed some things I clearly had been unclear about in the post. For example, when I said, “online CLE,” I meant “video archives.” I didn’t mean webcasts, which still hold some potential. I didn’t mean carefully-constructed e-learning and gaming environments (if you take CLE and don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s probably because these environments are not used by many CLE providers). And I certainly didn’t mean to limit the potential of the hybrid event.

But the future of online archived video as free? I’m sticking to that.

Interestingly, online CLE provider Lawline.com agrees with me. Sort of. Its CEO, David Schnurman, and I actually talked about this at the meeting and he didn’t specifically say he agreed or disagreed, but he did say they would soon be launching something that would interest me. They have and it did.

Today, Lawline announced learn.lawline.com, which provides free access to Lawline’s entire library of videos (otherwise known as online archives). They’ve broken each hour-long program into bite-sized pieces on narrow topics. If you want the full version with CLE credit, you pay. All the video clips can be shared and embedded, so obviously it could be a great marketing tool for them, but what caught my eye about the format was that it takes a certain amount of planning, forethought and restraint on the part of the provider and the presenter to end up with a video that can be easily broken up into shorter topics.

I like when a CLE program is given a high level of attention and I like when lawyers are able to access the information as they need it. I’m not as crazy about a model that sells credits, but I definitely give credit to Lawline for trying something completely different and I’ll be watching to see how it goes.

What do you think?

Correction: David from Lawline just let me know it’s only 1/3 of their catalog so far, but that they’re adding to it weekly.