Guidelines for Practice Points

Practice Points (PPs) are short, substantive pieces that should pertain to some aspect of a committee’s area of focus.

The best Practice Points strive to present an active voice for the committee’s legal community and area of specialty. Because blogs are community-oriented and web-based, your Practice Points should provide links to relevant internal and external articles, resources, and webpages (see Guidelines for Substantive Content for linking guidelines). Practice Points can facilitate communication with committee membership through interaction with ABA Communities. The Section encourages your committee to develop a core group of regular contributors and also to use outside contributors.

Because frequent updates help push your page higher in search engine results, a committee with a robust Practice Points offering will attract more readers. To optimize Practice Points for search engines, content should feature headlines and lead sentences that contain many search terms.

FREQUENCY REQUIREMENT

Quarterly Committees: 4 PPs per month
Semiannual Committees: 2 PPs per month

FORMAT

Length. Practice Points are relatively short and should run 100–750 words.

Headline. Headlines should be concise, direct, and written to attract the reader’s attention. Headlines will be edited by staff whenever necessary. Keep the length to about 60 characters.

Blurb. Include a one- or two-sentence blurb for each Practice Point for use as a “teaser” that will accompany the article. Blurbs should complement the headline—not restate it—and should offer additional useful information for the reader. Blurbs must be a minimum of 100 characters.

Copy and Suggested Topics. Practice Points must be substantive in nature, and current. Readers want direct information that is relevant to their practices, and Practice Points offer many opportunities to provide this. Topics include tips on practical application of recent cases or legislation; summaries of past programming; heads-up on new online resources (ABA or non-ABA); and short checklist-type pieces. For example, the substance of a CLE offering may be briefly expanded upon, perhaps using a CLE presenter to create a short piece. The “who, what, and where” of the meeting are important and must be included, but it is secondary to the topical discussion.

Case summaries and “news” items are discouraged unless practical application is included and the case or news event is no more than six months old.

To promote meeting information in a Practice Points piece, write about the substantive issue covered at the meeting and link to the meeting information within that piece.

Author Attribution. Authors should create a MyABA profile that includes their bio and photo. Encourage all authors to do this with these instructions, or alternatively, send the author's name, contact information, bio, and photo to your staff editor. Nonmembers can create MyABA profiles. Author profiles add a visual element to each page and are a great marketing tool for authors to showcase their ABA work in one place.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Practice Points must be sent to the staff editor as a Microsoft Word attachment and accompanied by a signed publication agreement, with hyperlinks to relevant internal and external web resources already embedded in the document. The entries must meet length requirements (100–750 words), and read to ensure they are well written and well edited before submission to staff. Authors should not be sending content to staff. Committee editors should work directly with authors and send final, edited copy to staff.

EDITING AND QUALITY CONTROL
It is the responsibility of the committee editor to ensure that the Practice Points are well written, well edited, substantive, and accurate. Staff editors edit all Practice Points for style, spelling, and grammar, and reserve the right to make deletions to conform to Section guidelines and space limitations. Staff editors will also edit copy and headlines as necessary to improve web presentation. While a CMC member will regularly review your Practice Points, it is your readers who are the ultimate judge of the content. Poor writing and editing will result in low traffic, negative feedback, lackluster reviews, and, ultimately, little interest on the part of committee members, potential members, and the greater legal community.

PUBLICATION AGREEMENT
A signed, completed publication agreement must be filled out by each author and received by the ABA before a Practice Point is published. These agreements grant the ABA the exclusive right of first publication (or permission to republish), the nonexclusive right to reprint, and the right to use the work in another ABA publication or medium. (See Guidelines for Copyrights.)

POSTING PROCESS
Staff will make every effort to post complete entries that are not missing any of the submission requirements within 48 hours. A Practice Point submitted the last two days of the month is not guaranteed posting in that month, but once posted will display the date it was received by ABA staff. Committee editors should check Practice Points once posted and communicate any errors to staff.

CMC REVIEWS OF PRACTICE POINTS
Your committee’s CMC liaison will regularly read your Practice Points and will provide feedback in the quarterly reviews of your committee’s webpages.