As COVID-19 mandates virtual law classes, nonprofit creates list of volunteer online speakers
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If you have any interest in being a guest law school speaker, now is the time, provided that you’re comfortable doing it online.
John Peter Mayer, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, has created a survey for those interested, where they can list their contact information, areas of legal expertise, LinkedIn profile and Twitter handle.
“If you are an established speaker, I don’t know if you want to offer to speak for free, but if you are an up-and-coming person with expertise to share, this is a good way to do that. And this is good if you’re sitting at home in your pajamas and you’ve got some time on your hands,” Mayer told the ABA Journal.
So far, 53 attorneys have signed up as volunteer speakers, he says. The list of interested lawyers will be posted on a CALI website page about COVID-19 teaching resources, and faculty who want class speakers can contact the volunteers directly.
“All of these offers to be guest speakers would go by on Twitter. Social media is a river of news, so if you don’t take a picture of a boat when it goes by, you don’t know that the boat went by,” Mayer says. “Then I realized that this could be a survey page.”
“I have seen several folks generously offer to be a guest speaker for law faculty who are teaching online courses—some for the first time. I thought it would be a good idea to try to consolidate these offers,” Meyer wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Besides the list of volunteer law speakers, CALI’s COVID-19 page has resources about topics such as being videotaped while teaching and tracking student progress. It also includes links to advice pieces written by law professors with online teaching experience.
