Online delivery of required training to benefit member lawyers as new deadlines approach.

SAN FRANCISCO AND SEATTLE, January 4, 2001

The Bar Association of San Francisco ("BASF") has selected Taecan.com, the Recognized Leader for Online CLE, to be its partner in making the BASF Continuing Legal Education (CLE) courses available online to all California attorneys. The award winning CLE content will be added to the expanding Taecan.com CLE online library and will be accessible to California attorneys wherever they may be around the globe. This partnership will greatly assist California attorneys in meeting new court-imposed CLE deadlines, some as early as the end of January, 2001.

Background on California CLE

Until two years ago, like in most states, lawyers in California were required to take a minimum number of continuing legal education courses every year, to keep their skills current post bar exam. The CLE requirements were in place to make sure lawyers stayed on top of changing legal matters. But in 1998, a legal challenge to the mandatory requirement, which questioned part of the rule that exempted certain attorneys from the requirement, prompted a suspension in the requirement until the courts sorted out the challenge. The result has been that for the last two years, many California attorneys failed to keep up their MCLE compliance.

In the summer of 2000, the California Supreme Court reinstated the rule and made it retroactive to the date of the lawsuit. Although the new rule reduced the number of hours required (to 25 hours per 3 years), the retroactive provision left many California lawyers in the lurch. About one third were estimated to be 50 or more hours behind. The first compliance deadline set by the Court is January 31, 2000, which could affect up to two-thirds of California attorneys.

The Bar Association of San Francisco Chooses Taecan.com

Knowing that many lawyers were faced with the threat of MCLE noncompliance, and wanting to make the BASF CLE content available to a wider audience, the Bar Association of San Francisco chose Taecan.com to be its official Online CLE "partner". As part of the agreement, Taecan has offered to donate a portion of the registration fees for certain courses to related BASF charitable activities.

"By partnering with Taecan.com, the Bar Association of San Francisco has quickly and inexpensively established an online presence for its CLE courses. This will help our members meet their CLE obligations, and make our courses--particularly in areas such as elimination of bias and ethics—available to attorneys around the country."

Barbara Fanning
Bar Association of San Francisco

The Agreement between the two organizations also makes Taecan.com's trademarked " KeepTrack™" system available to Bar Association of San Francisco members at no additional cost . A boon to lawyers who have trouble keeping track of their CLE hours earned, KeeptTrack™ offers a continuously available "user friendly" way to track their CLE credit hours and report them if required.

"Sometimes lawyers have trouble keeping track of their credit hours earned, especially in states like California, where mandatory CLE has just been re-enacted or in states where the reporting period spans more than one year." KeepTrack™ is an easy way to make sure all hours are accounted for and properly reported."

Patrick Vane
CEO of Taecan.com

The traditional method of obtaining CLE credits--live seminars—requires attorneys to leave their practices, and thus lose billable hours. The attorneys usually also incur expenses for travel and lodging. Online CLE has none of these "costs" because it may be taken "24/7" in the comfort of home or office. For this reason, Online CLE is proving tremendously popular with attorneys.

About Taecan.com. Taecan is Old English for " to teach". Taecan.com is a Seattle based Internet company that offers a convenient and affordable alternative to seminar style " fixed time and place" CLE seminars. The company, founded by an attorney and educator, has rapidly aggregated the largest online library of approved CLE titles in the world by partnering with bar organizations to deploy their content over the Internet. Taecan.com has similar contracts with numerous other bar organizations including the Florida Bar, the New York City Bar, the Ohio Bar, the State Bar of California, the Orange County Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar, the Houston Bar and with numerous other CLE content providers.

About the Bar Association of San Francisco. Founded in 1872, the Bar Association of San Francisco has over 9,000 members in the San Francisco Bay Area, and enjoys the support of over 400 Sponsor Firms, Corporations, and Law Schools.

The Association serves as a national leader to:

provide full and equal access to the system of justice
influence public policy and promote the effective administration of justice
engage in public service programs reaching out to youth and other vulnerable populations
achieve equal opportunity in the legal profession and justice system for minorities, women, gay men and lesbians and people with disabilities
meet the professional needs of lawyers

The Bar Association of San Francisco has a long and distinguished history of developing high quality CLE for its members and the attorney population at large.

In addition to the courses offered for purchase, any user may take a free sample course at Taecan.com. This course is being offered to Ohio lawyers to familiarize them with Taecan.com and the Internet as a legal education delivery tool. The sample class does not allow the user to receive credit for the course, but it allows the attorney to have the Taecan.com experience. This fully-functional site enables users to review course materials, take quizzes and tests, and report CLE credit electronically, all online. While significant effort went into the implementation of this site, it is only the beginning: improvements will be added based on Taecan.com's business-plan directives and customer and investor feedback.