Now that we've sent notice to schools and it has shown up on the blogs, we want to acknowledge here that, yes, CALI member dues for law schools will be going up over the next two years. We plan to deliver more content to you, our members, with this increased contribution. Most notably: five eLangdell casebooks a year and more CALI lessons. We want the changes that lie ahead to be as transparent as possible. So please contact us with feedback and questions. Read on for more details and reasoning in our Executive Director's letter to membership.
From our Executive Director, John Mayer...
Dear Supporters of CALI,
At my request, the CALI Board of Directors has authorized a dues increase for July of 2011 of $1250 and for July of 2012 of $1250. CALI dues will be $6250 in 2011 and $7500 in 2012. The most recent dues increase was four years ago in 2007. This needs some explanation.
Concretely, with this increased revenue, CALI will hire two new staff members so as to increase the amount of content we deliver to you. We want to fund at least one new CALI Fellowship per year to produce new clusters of lessons in Administrative Law, Bankruptcy, Immigration Law and other areas where CALI's Library of Lessons is deficient. In 2010, we saw our third straight year of over 1 million lesson runs from the website and we want to build on that success of delivery to your students.
Also, we want to publish at least 5 new electronic casebooks per year under the eLangdell Press “imprint”. I struggled with communicating all of the nuance of what we are doing with eLangdell. “Imprint” struck me as particularly apt as it both means “publisher identifier” and “a distinctive influence”. This represents both of our goals for eLangdell.
Legal education is changing and law schools must have ownership and control of the core content of the course – the casebook. In order to do that, law schools and law faculty must be free to deconstruct and remix the casebook with online and electronic tools that are unencumbered by cost, format or permission. eLangdell books will be free to law schools, in multiple formats and devices and Creative Commons in licensing.
In addition, the casebook as we know it will undergo a radical change in the coming years. It will be a more connected, fluid, flexible, multimedia and yes, social. We seek to expand the thinking and the range of potential, for teaching and education by broadening the concept of the casebook.
We also need this dues increase for more operational reasons such as to update the growing back catalog of over 850 CALI lessons and to maintain the increasingly complex web-based services and software such as the Legal Education Commons, Classcaster, Excellence for the Future Awards, CALI Author, MediaNotes, Instapoll, CALI Webinars and others.
CALI has been in existence for 29 years and was actually producing computer-based tutorials in the 1970's before incorporating as a 501(c)(3) in 1982. We interact with over 300 lesson authors, 100+ registrars, 200+ CALI Representatives and thousands who have attended the Conference for Law School Computing. We are deeply embedded in legal education and constantly working on new projects and technologies. We see ourselves as an applied research organization – not just investigating new ideas, but implementing, testing and refining them with the purposes of bringing them to your faculty and students in a way they can use in their education, scholarship and public service.
We know these are difficult economic times. It is because of this that we ask your support and pledge to do our very best to earn that support and deliver quality and innovation now and into the future. CALI delivers useful and high quality educational content and is also your investment in the future.
As always, I welcome your feedback.
With Regards,
John
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John Mayer
Executive Director
Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction/CALI
565 West Adams
Chicago, IL 60661
312-906-5307
312-906-5280 - fax
jmayer@cali.org
http://www.cali.org
twitter.com/johnpmayer