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Podcasts have become a way for ABA entities to educate and entertain

By Lee Rawles

June 1, 2018, 12:50 am CDT

Lawyers’ time is extremely valuable. So why would a busy attorney devote nonbillable hours to a podcast?

“It’s a very efficient way to receive information that’s targeted to a specific topic,” says Elisa Poteat, a host of National Security Law Today, a podcast produced by the ABA Standing Committee on Law & National Security. “You can pick up books and spend hours trying to read through them or spend 35 minutes hearing from one of the nation’s foremost practitioners.”

National Security Law Today, which launched in September, is one of several podcasts produced by ABA entities. Poteat co-hosts the podcast with fellow national security attorney Yvette Bourcicot, an adviser to the standing committee.

Poteat says she advocated for the committee to create a podcast for two main reasons: to make the topic of national security law more accessible to the uninitiated and to promote the expert discussions that take place at the committee’s public events.

“It’s one of the few podcasts in this space that features lawyers with experience as opposed to pure opiners,” Poteat says. As an example, she points to a November episode with Mark S. Zaid, a Washington, D.C., attorney who has a practice focused on national security law.

“Whistleblowing and leaks were all over the news, and we were able to interview one of the world’s leading practitioners,” Poteat says. “People tend to throw around the term whistleblower, but whistleblower is a legal definition, and it was incredibly helpful to have Mark on to explain it.”

VETERAN VOICES

The ABA’s access to lawyers who have deep expertise also has been key for On the Ground, another recently launched podcast produced by the ABA Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence and funded by a grant from the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.

On the Ground’s first season provided advice from experienced practitioners in the field to young attorneys just beginning their practices. Its second season launched in April and features interviews with judges.

Anya Lynn-Alesker, managing attorney for the commission, is the host and closes each episode with the slogan “Clear law, full heart, can’t lose.”

Lynn-Alesker says since the commission was founded, about two months after the Violence Against Women Act was signed in 1994, its objective has been “to elevate the bar of attorneys who represent domestic, dating, sexual and stalking violence victims and survivors.”

The commission has provided training and support through in-person, multiday institutes, teleconferences and, more recently, webinars.

“So we have been talking about our future and strategic planning and what we think we should be doing as we move forward in trying to support the field, and we looked at the year and realized it was time to join the podcast movement,” Lynn-Alesker says. “I do think that Serial and some of those larger podcasts were an inspiration, in that you can have more substantive conversations and that they can captivate people.”

 

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This article was published in the June 2018 ABA Journal magazine with the title "Lend me your ears: Podcasts have become a way for ABA entities to educate and entertain."