For the members: new services and an improved Web site.

The Florida Bar provides many services and benefits for its members. Unfortunately, many of those services and benefits are underutilized. While touring the state, I am constantly surprised that many of our members are unaware of the services The Florida Bar provides. My favorites are our highly praised ethics hotline, which guides members in their contemplated ethical conduct, and our LOMAS program, which teaches members practice management skills. These are fabulous member services, and I would encourage you to take advantage of them.

Your Board of Governors and I have been working hard to develop some new services for our membership. I am excited to tell you about three of them I hope will be available in the next month or so.

First, free online legal research to all Bar members! The plan, which is being developed with FastCase, would provide Florida case law since 1950, U.S. 11th Circuit and Fifth Circuit courts of appeals decisions, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Florida statutes, the Florida Administrative Code, and the Florida Constitution, free of charge to all Florida Bar members.

Although intended as a basic service, Bar members will have the option of paying for additional services. FastCase was selected after negotiations with six companies that submitted bids, as it offered the best price for the basic services the Bar wanted to offer its members. In addition, FastCase is an existing, experienced company that has private clients, and is working to provide a similar service for two other state bar associations.

If all the details can be worked out, the Board of Governors could approve the final contract at its April 8 meeting. If that occurs, The Florida Bar will be offering free training during the June Annual Meeting. We expect new and young Bar members to benefit from the service as they work to set up their practices and begin their careers. We also hope that older lawyers, who may have been daunted by complex and expensive online research services, will be interested. The price will be right and the chance for free training will allow Bar members to sample cyber-research with the investment of only a little time.

The online research will be available from the Bar's Web site, www.flabar.org, which is itself undergoing an overhaul. Begun six years ago, the Web site has provided increasing amounts of information and has become one of the Bar's most valuable resources, both for members and the public. The Web site includes, by way of example, a search feature to help citizens find lawyers, the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, and a wide variety of links. It isn't, however, as user friendly as it should be because our emphasis has been in providing the information, rather than organizing it in a simple format and an easy-to-find manner.

The redesign effort is already well under way as you read this column. A group of 50 people is checking suggested revisions for clarity and efficiency. The goal is to make the site easier to use, more attractive to view, and useful and valuable for both lawyers and the public. We hope that when the redesign is completed, you will be able to find any information with no more than two or three clicks.

This is particularly important because of the wide variety of information available on the site--including some that was previously printed in the Bar Journal's annual directory issue. Because the Web site provides the most current information, particularly regarding member data, the Board of Governors removed some of the content of the annual directory last year. Another reason for removing sections was to address the increased printing and mailing expenses for a 900-page publication. All directory information, or links to it, is available through the Web site.

You can look up a lawyer in the directory, or find the same lawyer using the Attorney Search service on www.flabar.org. The Web site listing includes the most recent member information: address, telephone and facsimile numbers, and e-mail. Also available is the date of admission, board certification, circuit and county location, and status (member in good standing, inactive, retired). Bar members may be located by geographic area also. With a well organized Web site, you can actually find the information faster than by picking up the book (although some of us will always be more comfortable with the printed version).

Along with the Web site overhaul, the Bar is examining another related service, allowing lawyers to link their Web sites to their personal information on www.flabar.org. This would mean that when potential clients use the Attorney Search service on the site (one of its most popular features), instead of just getting a name, address, and phone number, the viewer would also get a link to the lawyer's (or the firm's) Web site.

Details still need to be developed. Concerns must be addressed such as whether those Web sites would have to conform with Bar advertising rules and whether the Bar should charge a fee to offset the cost of setting up the link.

These new programs require a lot of planning and evaluation, but your board and I feel this work is worth it. We hope you will, too.

Editor's Note: Dorothy Easley's article, "'Plain English' Jury Instructions: Why They're Still Needed and What the Appellate Community Can Do to Help," 78 Fla. B.J. 68 (October 2004), set out on page 68 a number of suggestions for improving the comprehensibility of instructions. For those suggestions, the author inadvertently failed to credit the article by Professor Joseph Kimble, "How to Mangle Court Rules and Jury Instructions," 8 Scribes J. Legal Writing 39, 53-54 (2001-2002). The author deeply regrets and sincerely apologizes for that error.