Bar alliance
A shared member management system people at Bars helps in sharing of common resources and cost savings such as the redundant servers, the greater access to bandwidth and the improved business continuation capability.
With reciprocity, multi-jurisdictional practice, and the increasing potential mobility of a lawyer’s practice mandatory Bars are going to be experiencing increasing pressure to keep pace.
Some of the ideas that might illustrate the potential of a shared data system:
A lawyer relocates from one state to another. Both Bars are on the BarAlliance system and so the member makes a request to have his record and CLE history transfered to the new state.
A lawyer has a practice in two states each of which has a mandatory CLE reporting requirement. Both states have a reciprocity agreement so that when the lawyer has the CLE attendance filed it is filed with both states at the same time.
A state Bar on the BarAlliance system subcontracts the system to a smaller regional or specialty Bars in the area providing that Bar or Bars with access to the system for a small fee which helps to defray the costs.
A Bar director that is new to the BarAlliance system opens the shared reports library to look at reports that are in use by other Bars. Finding that Hawaii has an excellent transaction history report the director has the Hawaii report imported to his or her Bar’s system.
A Bar undergoes a change in its rules or policies that require a change in the Rules Control system on their BarAlliance system. The system admin for the Bar goes to a Rules Library to see if there is already a similar rule in place at another Bar. Finding one, the system admin has it pulled into their BarAlliance system.