Back in early 2006, my barrister friend Daniel Barnett ran a telephone seminar on employment law and was struck by how popular it proved to be. This gave him the idea to set up a business delivering CPD training online and from there the two of us decided to collaborate on setting up CPD Webinars. We’d both been practising as barristers for quite a few years and had each set up specialist email newsletters in our own subject areas of employment and personal injury law respectively. The idea was that we would be able to advertise the training principally through those newsletters and then concentrate on the webinars themselves.

There were a number of choices we needed to make and get right before launching. The first and most important was whether we would base the business on audio or video webinars. The trade-off as we saw it was cost against quality. Audio webinars cost very little whereas each video webinar cost several thousand pounds to make. Despite the fact that doing video webinars would clearly mean taking a risk in the sense that we’d have to sign up with a provider before having all of our customers in place we were both firmly of the view that if we were looking to make the business last then videos were by far the best way forward. It would also mean that we were (probably) the first to be providing CPD training in this way.

Next we had to decide on a provider and after some research we chose Bright Talk. It was a good choice. They provide a package which includes use of the studio, filming, live streaming and then putting it online afterwards so that people can watch the whole thing at their leisure. They also do the back-end work on power-point slides and the obligatory CPD multiple choice test which accompany the webinar. We then integrate the whole thing with our own website and this works very well.

Pricing structure also had to be decided and specifically whether we would charge per delegate or per office. We figured that if we really wanted to make an impact and be truly forward thinking then charging a sum for the whole office would be most attractive to the consumer and so we plumped for that (though we also have a discount for single fee-earners).

Finally, there were the number of webinars we would provide each year – did we go for once a month or maybe even once a week? Again, we went for quality over quantity and figured on providing twelve CPD hours per subject limited to the very best speakers on each particular niche area. The reasoning was that this would provide the core of the requisite 16 CPD hours for solicitors who tend to accumulate a few extra hours in any event. Then as a fall back we also have two free introductory CPD hours available online for each subject just in case solicitors have a shortfall.

So with this and many other matters decided and after a test webinar in October 2006 we finally launched early in 2007 and haven’t looked back. In particular, people appreciate not having to leave the office to get their CPD points, they like the speakers and hey, it’s even environmentally friendly.

Tim Kevan is a co-founder of CPD Webinars and Personal Injury Brief Update. He also writes the BabyBarista Blog.

Email tim@timkevan.com.

To get your free webinar and 2 CPD hours, visit cpdwebinars.com.