Make a New Year’s Resolution to Use OBA-NET
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

Every Oklahoma attorney should read this column. Please do not let the title of this article cause you to skip reading it entirely. I am well aware of the fact that, for a certain group of lawyers, the label OBA-NET translates as “that online thing that the bar has that I don’t know how to use” or that “online bar service I never have time to use.” Some lawyers do not even realize that OBA-NET is now free.

Take a few short minutes to read this very brief column and consider why you should add “Learning to use OBA-NET” to your list of New Year’s resolutions.

Simplicity

You may think that OBA-NET is an online haven for the power technology users among Oklahoma bar members. But if you can learn a user name and password and use the links on a Web page, you can participate in OBA-NET. In fact, at one time or another, about one quarter of the OBA membership has logged in to OBA-NET. While it is certainly true that some of the OBA’s “power technology users” participate, it is not true that all OBA-NETTERs have reached that pinnacle. In fact, some of the most active participants in OBA-NET often publicly note their lack of sophistication about technology.

Uniqueness

OBA-NET provides a great deal of Oklahoma-specific legal information. There is simply no other place online where you can interpret a judge’s reference to a statute that you can’t locate, get practice pointers about your first time handling a certain type of matter, get a second opinion about a novel legal theory or locate rarely-cited court opinions when traditional legal research methods fail. The lawyers who post messages on OBA-NET also provide information about other law-related topics, such as advanced reminders of law-related television broadcasts or personal reviews of law-related books and movies. Sometimes OBA-NETTERs will even post information that has nothing to do with the law, such as upcoming concert ticket sales information or links to Web sites related to their hobbies or other interests.

Referrals

OBA-NET is not intended to be a lawyer referral site. But there are often posts asking for names of lawyers who will handle a specific type of matter. More than one lawyer has reported to me receiving business because other lawyers read their substantive law posts on OBA-NET. And, while it may sound odd to those who have never participated in an online community, there is no doubt that business relationships can be developed on OBA-NET, even though the lawyers may rarely (or never) see each other in person.

Value

Lawyers who regularly use OBA-NET find consistent value there. Whether it is finding the answer to a question in a few minutes that might have taken hours to research or being alerted to an Internet sales special on an item that you need which expires in 48 hours, there is no doubt that you can obtain tangible economic benefits by participating in OBA-NET.

Simply put, OBA-NET is an online message board and file uploading and downloading service is restricted for use to OBA members. In reality, it is a bit more. It serves as a daily virtual ongoing bar association meeting, a no-credit CLE program, a courthouse coffee shop and an after-hours hangout.

OBA-NET isn’t perfect. Since any OBA member can post their opinion or viewpoint online, there will undoubtedly be postings on OBA-NET with which many will disagree. A message board that has hundreds of visitors each day will accumulate a fair amount of content on a weekly basis. The average lawyer will be unable to devote the time to read even most of the information. That is why the message areas are organized by topics. Here are my two most important tips for dealing with the volume of messages on OBA-NET: 1) if you have been absent from OBA-NET for several weeks and return to thousands of unread messages, just mark them all as read and start over, and 2) if you are an infrequent visitor to OBA-NET, always check Today’s Messages for the hot topics of interest.

OBA-NET is an online resource unique to Oklahoma. All members bring their unique value to this enterprise. Some intend to only read the messages and never post one of their own. (In Net-speak, these are called lurkers.) But soon they find that they, too, have something to contribute and join in.

The number of downloadable forms in the file areas varies based on what files have been uploaded by other OBA-NETTERs. There are lots of criminal procedure motions, for example, but relatively few in some other areas.

CLE Manual Download Premium Service

One incredibly valuable service of OBA-NET is the optional CLE manual download package. The written materials for most OBA/CLE programs are now scanned and uploaded to OBA-NET in PDF format approximately six months after the conclusion of the program. Access to download all of these materials costs a mere $100 per year. Enrollment for this service can be made when initially signing up for OBA-NET or at any other time by clicking on “options” and then “premium services.” The payment method is by credit card. There is information about the other premium services there.

How Does One Sign Up For OBA-NET?

First of all, you must have your current e-mail address on file with the OBA and it has to have been on file with us for more than 24 hours. If you have been receiving the OBA E-news, then we have your current e-mail. If not, or if you are not sure, skip down to the section on my okbar, log in and change your OBA records to your correct e-mail address. Then wait 24 hours and continue.

To register, go to www.oba-net.org, and click on “sign up.” (You should also note that if you forget your OBA-NET password, you can click “forgot my password” link here and have it e-mailed to your official e-mail address.) On the next page, you must answer certain questions to verify your identity so that your log-in information can be e-mailed to you when you complete this process. For security reasons, the information will only be sent to your official e-mail address on file with the OBA.

To complete the process, you must also choose which option you wish for your complementary OBA e-mail service: either Web mail accessed through OBA-NET or forwarding to an existing e-mail account. Specifying which of the two e-mail options you wish to use will be part of this initial sign-up process for OBA-NET. You might want to make this decision before you log in.

Involvement with OBA-NET is, like all resolutions, easy to make. But this New Year’s resolution is also easy to keep.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal Dec. 9, 2006 - Vol. 77; No.34