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INVITATION TO JOIN WOMEN'S BAR LEADERS LISTSERVE

Dear Women's Bar Leader,

This is an invitation to join the Women's Bar Leaders listserve. The listserve is operated as a free service by the National Conference of Women's Bar Associations. The purpose of the listserve is facilitate national - even international - exchanges among women's bar leaders.

Among the purposes of the listserve are: (1) generation of business referrals; (2) dissemination of conference and other information directly relevant to women lawyers and Women's Bar leaders; (3) exchange of information, including questions, success stories, etc. to assist the development of Women's Bar Associations.

You WILL NOT BE AUTOMATICALLY SUBSCRIBED TO THE LIST. This message is just an invitation to join. You MUST respond as indicated in the next paragraph in order to be subscribed to the list.

If you wish to subscribe, please send a message to our list manager, Kathleen (Kate) Waits <wombarlead-owner@egroups.com>. In your message, please BRIEFLY identify yourself and your interest in or experience with Women's Bar Associations. We ask you to identify yourself to avoid subscribing disruptive "lurkers" who do not support the mission of Women's Bar Associations. Sadly, women's email lists have sometimes encountered such lurkers. We want to be inclusionary, and we expect that nearly everyone who expresses interest will be quickly added to the listserve. Needless to say, subscribing under a phony identity or misrepresenting background information will be the basis for removal from the listserve.

Because we know how valuable your time is, WE HAVE ESTABLISHED STRICT GUIDELINES ON THE USE OF THE LIST. (See below.) We want the list to be useful but don't want it to clog up your mail box. We expect that the traffic on the list will generally be fairly light, although it may pick up during certain times of the year (e.g., around the time of the ABA Annual Meeting).

Based on our experience with other, similar lists, we believe SUBSCRIBING TO THIS LIST WILL NOT SUBJECT YOU TO SPAM (unsolicited advertisements). Spam will not be tolerated on the list, and neither the list nor the subscribers' addresses will be available to commercial vendors.

Some of you may not be clear on how a listserve works or what it does. A listserve is really just an easy way of distributing email to a large number of people with similar interests. Individual members of the list merely send their messages to the listserve address and the message is then automatically distributed to all list members.

You should receive a confirmation of your subscription within a few days after your expression of interest, and hopefully much sooner. That information will tell you how to send messages to the listserve and how to address any problems or questions, including how to unsubscribe. Note that the list managers are volunteers, so please be patient.

GUIDELINES FOR WOMEN'S BAR LEADERS Listserve MESSAGES

Too much traffic will defeat the purpose of the listserve, since many people will simply unsubscribe rather than deal with too many messages. PLEASE USE YOUR JUDGMENT in posting messages to the list. If in doubt, PLEASE CONTACT THE LIST MANAGER Kate Waits <wombarlead-owner@egroups.com> for her opinion about the appropriateness of a particular message.

The following types of messages are APPROPRIATE for the Women's Bar Leaders listserve:

1) Requests seeking referrals TO ANOTHER ATTORNEY (NOT seeking referrals for the person posting the message or her firm). Example: "We're looking for a worker's comp lawyer in Seattle. Any suggestions?"

2) Requests seeking suggested participants/nominees for programs and organizations that would spotlight or honor the person suggested. Examples: (1) "I'm looking for a family lawyer who's an expert on domestic violence for a CLE in Des Moines, Iowa, in July. Can pay expenses but no honorarium. Any suggestions?" (2) "My state bar claims that there are no women officers in the Intellectual Property Section because there aren't any women interested and available. Any suggestions?" (3) "We want to honor a woman judge who's made a difference in women's lives. Suggestions?"

3) Informational announcements DIRECTLY AND SPECIFICALLY RELATED to women lawyers and women's bar leaders and members. Examples: CLE's, books and other publications, meetings, web sites.

4) Questions and information about Women's Bar Associations. Examples: Sharing stories about successful programs that your Women's Bar has conducted; asking questions about other's experiences with certain programs and/or problems.

5) Political and similar announcements DIRECTLY AND SPECIFICALLY RELATED to women lawyers and women's bar leaders and members. This is a VERY LIMITED category, limited to matters such as judicial appointments of women. It SHOULD NOT include more general political announcements, even those that concern women's issues such as breast cancer, domestic violence, reproductive choice, etc.

The following types of messages are NOT APPROPRIATE for the Women's Bar Leaders listserve:

1) Marketing by list members. DO NOT send announcements about opening of new offices or changes to a new firm, or indicating your availability for certain types of work.

2) General political announcements or petitions - INCLUDING those concerning general women's issues.

3) General CLE, lawyer-related or bar-related information.

4) Any other message not directly related to women lawyers and women's bar associations. This category includes: jokes (even funny ones); warnings re internet scams or viruses, etc.

5) Any kind of "flaming" or personal attacks. Any disagreement with other people on the list should be respectful and non-personal.

The list managers reserve the right to exclude people from the list for failure to comply with these guidelines. (But we are nice and reasonable people.) In addition, the list managers reserve the right to change these guidelines as we gain experience with the list.

THESE GUIDELINES ARE NOT INTENDED TO SCARE YOU OFF OR TO KEEP YOU FROM POSTING VALUABLE INFORMATION. Rather, experience with other listserves suggests that establishing guidelines at the beginning helps the list to run more smoothly and effectively.

For your information, the primary list manager is Kathleen (Kate) Waits, Associate Professor, University of Tulsa College of Law, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Board Member, National Conference of Women's Bar Associations; Member, Tulsa Women's Lawyer Association. Kate is assisted by Diane Rynerson, Executive Director, National Conference of Women's Bar Associations, Portland, Oregon.