Information for Virginia CLE Speakers

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The following information is presented to help you prepare for speaking at one of our seminars. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Program Attorney or Program Assistant in charge of the seminar.

Presentation Tips

• Preparing for the seminar. This short hand-out covers planning your presentation, preparing materials, and how to use PowerPoint.

Milestones

Your Program Attorney and/or Program Assistant will provide you with specific dates, but here are the general milestones:

Speaker Reimbursement Policy

Our governing CLE Committee approved this policy in January 2012. We are bound to abide by its terms, and ask you to do the same.

MCLE Credit

As a speaker in an approved CLE seminar, you may may claim credit for the time you actually taught, plus the time you spent preparing to teach. You may claim up to four minutes for every minute you taught, which will be rounded to the nearest half hour. You may not claim more than eight hours of preparation time for any one course. You use the MCLE Form 3 to claim teaching credit. We will have forms for you at the seminar, or we can send them to you afterwards.

Additional information if you are a speaker at a . . .

Phone Seminar

• This document describes in detail what you can expect to hear as we set up and present the seminar.
• Replays. Remember that at least one of the speakers has to be available by phone for the final 15 minutes of the replay.  Of course, we’d prefer that all the speakers be available.

Webcast

Please plan to arrive at the Virginia CLE^® Building (105 Whitewood Road, Charlottesville) no less than 30 minutes before the start of your seminar. If you get lost, or run into some other problem, please call us at (800) 979-8253.

The Setup

• The seminar room has a podium and table(s) in the front for the speakers. On the wall to the left of the speakers is a large flat-screen TV for any PowerPoint presentations. Facing the speakers are several rows of tables and chairs for attendees
• The room has several cameras, each of which is controlled by our technician who sits at a back table. He generally has one set as a “long” shot of all the speakers, and the others as a close shot of individual speakers. He can easily switch among the shots depending on who is talking. The shot he chooses is fed directly into our webcast platform and out to our webcast participants.
• There is a microphone at the podium. If you choose to speak from the table (most do) we will clip a lavalier microphone to a piece of your clothing, usually in the area between the second and third button from the top of a button-down shirt. We can also use a jacket. We also have microphones in the ceiling to pick up anything said by audience members.
• The microphones are only for the webcast. For our phone participants, we will place a speakerphone just in front of the table, with satellite pick-ups at each end. If sitting in front of one, please try not to rustle papers on/near it.
• If you choose to utilize PowerPoint, we will also set up a laptop computer just in front of your table so you can see the slides without needing to look back at the flat screen. You will have a remote “clicker” to advance the slides. If you require any special media assistance, or if your PowerPoint presentation requires anything special such as audio output, alert your program attorney well in advance of the seminar date.

The Program

• At the beginning of your seminar, the phone operator will come on the speakerphone and give about 30 seconds of instructions to the phone participants, after which he turns it over to the program attorney. The webcast goes live at that point.
• Your program attorney welcomes all three audiences (live/webcast/phone), gives some additional instructions, introduces the speakers (generally in a summary fashion—your full biographies are in the written materials), and turns it over to the first speaker.
• As you speak, focus on the live audience, and do not worry about the cameras. If we do not have a live audience, you can speak to your program attorney who will be in the room with you.
• Please remember that our phone participants cannot see what you are doing. Accordingly, if you are demonstrating something that is important, please describe what you are doing.  Also, if you are using PowerPoint, please occasionally refer to the slide you are on.
• We encourage interaction between the speakers. It is difficult for the audience to remain focused on only one “talking head” for more than about 10 minutes, so consider adding some variety. Some possibilities: planned or ad hoc questions for your partner(s) (“What have you seen that works to address this problem?”); opportunities for debate (“I know you read this case differently. What is your view?”); or simple interruptions of the current speaker with questions or insights.
• Audience Questions. Webcast and phone participants send us their questions electronically during the program. We print them out as we receive them, and the program attorney will hand them to the off-camera speaker. You may choose to answer the question then, or hold it to a more appropriate time. If any of our live audience members asks a question, please summarize and repeat it for the benefit of our webcast and phone audience. If you get a question which you cannot immediately answer (e.g., you mention a case that is not in the materials, and someone asks for the citation), please remember that we can email an answer to all attendees after the program.
• Concluding the Seminar. Assuming it is a two-hour seminar (our most common), we need at least 1:46 of instruction to qualify for 2.0 hour of MCLE credit. A little more is better, but please try not to go much beyond 1:55. The reason for this is we usually replay the program a few weeks later and we have to give those participants some time at the end to ask live questions. Your program attorney will get closer and closer to the podium as your time nears its end. When you are done, he or she will have some final instructions for our audiences, and then we will sign off.

Clothing Suggestions

• Simple colors work really well on camera. Try to avoid colors that are extremely vibrant as they will distract.
• Patterns often don’t translate to video very well, especially complicated or small repeating patterns, such as neckties with a sawtooth pattern.

Replays: Replays are currently offered in the same manner as phone seminar replays.  As above, at least one speaker must be available for the last 15 minutes of the replay.