With 8,000 members, the Hennepin County Bar Association is Minnesota’s largest local bar association. To meet the CLE needs of its members, the association produces more than 35 hours a month of cutting-edge programming, covering a wide range of legal issues. Recent program topics included race bias in criminal court, conflict management in workplace situations, basic medical assistance, psychiatric disorders and employment issues, and attorney-client and work product privilege for in-house lawyers. These courses are designed to provide ongoing education and awareness of hot legal issues as well as to raise the level of professional conduct in the legal community.

West LegalEdcenter will deliver streaming video of these live and archived programs to a worldwide audience of attorneys and legal professionals. These courses and citations within supporting materials are linked directly to related legal documents on Westlaw® and in KeyCite®. This lets legal professionals participate in CLE classes from wherever they are, on their time, and allows them to study specific points of discussion in-depth, enhancing the learning experience. West LegalEdcenter also indexes and tracks courses for users, files for CLE credits and sends e-mail alerts to customers when desired programming becomes available.

"We’re not just putting CLE courses online," said Mike Wilens, president of West Group, "we’re improving the way legal professionals participate in CLE by ensuring access to the courses that they are most interested in and that most affect their practice. And by connecting courses to the full body of primary and analytical legal materials on Westlaw, we’re increasing the level of participation and value they receive from CLE."

"We’re committed to providing high-quality CLE programs that meet the needs of legal professionals and their practice," said Larry Buxbaum, executive director, Hennepin County Bar Association. "Making our CLE courses available online through West LegalEdcenter provides a new level of convenience and cost efficiency to our members. Our partnership with West Group and National Practice Institute makes CLE programming more accessible and more valuable, ensuring that our members provide the highest level of legal services to communities across Minnesota."

Working with National Practice Institute as its lead content partner, West Group offers the largest catalog of accredited continuing legal education courses on the Internet through West LegalEdcenter. The Hennepin County Bar Association joins a number of top national, state and local West LegalEdcenter content providers, including the Continue Learning Network, The Rutter Group and the Chicago Bar Association.