Guidelines for Legal Swap Meet Submissions

Deadlines

In months where no Bar Briefs is issued, the publication will come out the first Thursday of the month.  In months where Bar Briefs is issued, the publication will form the last pages of Bar Briefs and arrive with it.

Deadline for submissions

• No later than noon on the first Monday of the month in which you wish the item to appear. 
  
• No earlier than 30 days before the issue date in which you wish the item to appear.
  

Mandatory length limitation
The length of your submission may not exceed 6, 6.5-inch-wide lines in 11-point font*.  If you want more length, post your full document on your website, and fashion your submission to be a brief introduction to that document that includes a hyperlink to the full document.  We will not post your document to our website, or create your links.  Include just enough information in the submission to cause readers to understand what they're linking to. Use of fully functional links to fast-loading web pages formed in widely-used softwares/applications is strongly encouraged.  Over-length submissions and those with bad links will be, at the discretion of the editor, rejected without notice to you, so heed this limitation.

Other key limitations
To maintain fairness in the allocation of space, the editor reserves the right to limit the number of entries that are accepted about or benefitting any one lawyer or firm per year. 
This space is a member benefit exclusively for the active members of the 28th JDB.  It will not list the goods or services of any non-active-member person or entity, such as non-lawyer colleagues or office staff. 

We reserve full editorial control over the Bar Briefs, and as such the rights to refuse any submissions, and to amend or remove content from your submission for purposes including space, formatting, and accuracy; and the avoidance of redundancy or offense to readers. 
We cannot assure that physical materials presented to us with your submission will be returned to you unaltered, so please do not submit original, valuable, or irreplaceable items.

Suggested content
When you don't write classified ads every day it can be hard to remember what ought to be stated and how to state it briefly.  Here are some suggestions for formulating your content to make most effective use of your allotted 6, 6.5-inch wide lines in 11 point font.  None of these suggestions is a required element of your submission.

New office announcement

• Your name
• Name of place/entity you're joining [just name, no descriptors]
• Your title there
• Your & the firm's practice focus in 120 characters or less.
• Your contact data there:  address, Email, phone; assistant name if appropriate.
• See samples on last page.

Classified ad for job posting [length suggestions are provided for the various elements, since these can get lengthy]

• Your name [4 words or less]
• Your contact data for this job [30 characters or less; ex:  humanresources@greatlawfirm.com]
• ob title [5 words or less]
• Means of applying-"Email resume to …."  "click here for application", etc.-in 40 characters incl spaces, or less.
• Any salary & benefits data you're willing to give, in 70 characters incl spaces, or less.
• Short summary of job description, in 100 characters incl spaces, or less.
• Position opening and closing date, in 25 characters incl spaces, or less.

Classified ad for item for sale

• Your name [4 words or less]
• Your contact data for this sale [30 characters or less; ex:  255-5555, or beachhouseforsale@charter.net]
• Name the item, in 3 words or less.
• Describe the item, in 100 characters incl spaces, or less.
• Name terms of sale, in 120 characters incl spaces, or less -

o    pricing,

o    whether or not tax applies [keep in mind out of state readers],

o    negotiability,

o    delivery/receipt conditions including shipping cost,

o    when the offer closes out. 

• The Bar Communications Task Force will not give you tax advice or edit your incorrect statements about tax.  It will include at the bottom of the classified ads, disclaimers to readers to this effect.

• Comply with Bar's separate guidelines about who can sell in this forum.
  
  

*Helpful hints for staying within length limits
100 characters incl spaces is exactly one line in a Word document with one inch margins at 11 point font.

How to automatically count characters

In Word 2007:
In the document where you want to count, click Review Pane, Proofing group, and click the icon that shows "ABC" over "123".  A screen opens that shows you the current count on several indices; "characters including spaces" is about halfway down the list.  Close that screen to grow or shrink your count, and re-open it to see the changed statistics.

Sample new lawyer/office announcements
Jane Sanders Doe is a new member of the 28th JDB.  She joins the firm of Smith Jones as a partner after a tenure with Powell and Howell in Raleigh.

Tharrington A. "Tripp" Deberry III is a new member of the 28th JDB.  He is a 2008 UNC Law graduate who just passed the bar and is seeking employment in Asheville.

Sally Smith Adams and Mark Barnard Adams are new members of the 28th JDB.  They are newly married and come here from a clerkship with Judge Duncan of the Fourth Circuit and the post of General Counsel with Ford Motor Company, respectively.  They have formed the firm of Adams and Adams, which will specialize in immigration and international human rights.