Page 5 - AnnualReport2014

Report of the President
In the fall of 2014, I announced my retirement from PLI as of the April 2015 Annual Meeting. My successor as President is my longtime colleague, Anita Shapiro, who is an excellent and most popular choice. As for facts and figures for 2014, please see within this report a list of speakers, authors, topics, finance details, as well as PLI’s organization of Trustee and staff members.
This would seem the appropriate occasion to give a brief overview of the number of changes at PLI from when I took office in January 1983 through 2014. By 1983, PLI was firmly established as a leading provider of national continuing legal education, built on its reputation for reliable, high quality, and timely programs and materials. While there was no change with this standard, time allowed for a number of developments to keep PLI in its leading position.
In 1983, PLI had 85 staff employees and now has more than 250. PLI had only one office in New York City and now we have an office in San Francisco. Until 1990, all of our programs were held in hotels. We now operate two state-of- the-art training centers in NYC and San Francisco. Our annual registrations have risen from approximately 18,000 to almost 400,000 due to changes in delivery, so that we now serve customers with live programs, live webcasts, and substantial on-demand archives. Pro bono was always part of PLI’s brand with numbers in the hundreds in 1983, whereas in 2014, we provided more than 58,000 scholarships. Also in 2014, PLI added another dimension to its pro bono training by inaugurating a series of seed money demonstration grants to pro bono groups to enable them to hire full-time trainers to train staff, volunteer lawyers and law students. The recipients of the grants were Legal Services, NYC; Safe Passage Project (housed at New York Law School), and Legal Services for the Hudson Valley (LSHV).
Of course, in 1983, there were no cell phones, Internet tablets or apps. All program registrations were individual signups whereas 85% of registrations currently are pre-sold via subscriptions known as Privileged Membership. There were sporadic overseas programs. We now have three annual programs in London, Hong Kong and Brazil.
Major changes
Five major changes have brought us to where we are today.
Business model – As a result of a major downturn in CLE attendance in the early 1990s, PLI started a long, steady process of moving registrations to a subscription model called Privileged Membership, culminating in having the participation of 1,500 law firms, corporate law departments, government agencies pro bono groups and individuals currently totaling more than 230,000.
More recently, PLI has developed a parallel subscription model for written materials through our online research platform, Discover PLUS, with many large member firms paying one annual fee for their lawyers to have a legal search mechanism for PLI Course Handbooks, Treatises, Answer Books, forms, transcripts with more availability electronically.
Delivery model – PLI has had a number of firsts in technology, being an early developer of a satellite system that in 1982 reached more than 2,500 registrants at 60 locations around the country. PLI was also an early adopter of utilizing computer search of its capabilities via agreements with West, Lexis and later with Bloomberg. In the 1990s, PLI also preceded our competition and most law firm customers with an email system and a website. Taking advantage of our decision to build a training center in New York City in 1990 (adding San Francisco at the end of the decade) we had the capability of providing archived video and audio of training center programs. We then formed an Online Division in 2000 to provide live
webcasts of programs in New York and California. Currently, PLI provides live webcasts of almost all of our program titles. In early 2015, PLI had another first by presenting two different yet simultaneous live webcasts of New York training center programs to separate audiences.
On the publications side, Treatises have moved from a small selection of titles issued in hardcover form, updated every several years to a robust offering of more than 100 titles most supplemented twice annually. Our publishing capability was notably enhanced in 2006 when we adopted a digital approach allowing for faster time to print but most importantly an ability to deliver individual books electronically. In sum, PLI was an early adherent to the digital revolution.
Organizational model – Providing these new forms of reaching and training customers required changes to our organizational model. As we grew more sophisticated, we felt the need to look outside the current organizational structure (and outside the organization) to get the “right people on the bus”. In 2000, we formed the Online Division and hired a director and staff. As Privileged Membership increased, a Sales Division was created in mid-2005. In quick succession, we added an R&D Director in 2007 and later a CIO to coordinate IT, Online, Book Production and R&D. In 2006, we also hired a CFO for the first time.
Acquisitions – In the late 1990s PLI confronted “make or buy” situations in key areas. In the first case, PLI purchased a patent bar review course to replace the very successful one we had but which was not flexible enough to fit future needs. The traditional PLI patent course is still with us but not as a bar review course. Since the purchase, PLI has enjoyed many years of stellar performance aimed not just at patent lawyers, but law students, scientists and engineers as well who need to pass the exam in order to practice before the Patent Trademark Office.
At the start of 2014, PLI purchased the assets of The SEC Institute (SECI) which became in its first year a very successful training vehicle for those professionals, including lawyers, needing to master compliance with SEC rules and regulations.
Each acquisition, over a decade apart, enabled PLI to expand its reach beyond just lawyers while sticking to our mission of providing training in the law.
Geographic reach – While the core of PLI’s market is still the United States we have developed Annual Institutes in London, Hong Kong and Brazil. Due to our sales efforts and online programming, PLI has penetrated deeper into smaller cities and smaller firms in the United States as well. As of 2014, PLI had training centers and offices in New York and California and had increased PLI’s presence in Chicago to more than 40 programs annually as well as providing regular live program offerings in Washington, D.C. In addition, PLI regularly sends live telecasts to state bar CLE group seminar locations in up to 10 cities.
Finally, it cannot be stressed enough that all of the above changes occurred because of a most talented staff, supportive Trustees and generous volunteer faculty and authors.
February 11, 2015
Victor J. Rubino
President
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