Warning: While this post targets one of the MSBA’s newest online offerings, it opens with warm, familiar Minnesota references – like a Coen brothers movie ^[1].

That’s because the subject – the Bar’s annual Bench & Bar directory issue – was itself a warm, familiar Minnesota reference. As in, a hefty reference book offering quick access to colleagues, courtrooms, and state offices. For a generation or four, Minnesota lawyers turned to it for a phone number, just as they might look up the phone number for the Jolly Troll ^[2] on Highway 12 ^[3], just across the street from the Cooper Theatre ^[4].

They might agree to meet a colleague at Southdale ^[5], perhaps under the birdcage or near the fish pond ^[6]. Or swap tickets for a Twins, Twins, or Twins game ^[7].

But it wouldn’t take a Weatherball ^[8] – with those snappy Weatherball lyrics in song or verse ^[9] – to forecast trends for print directories. Over the course of several years, Bench & Bar staff invoked several strategies to contain rising costs of the annual directory issue: Cheaper paper. Postal discounts. The costs always won.

Phone companies underwrite their white-page listings by snagging a penny here and there from monthly phone bills. If you’ve placed a listing in the Yellow Pages, you know that the market value far exceeds the cost of throwing ink onto a square of paper. In fact, advertising does support the direct costs of printing and mailing regular monthly issues of Bench & Bar. In the case of the much larger annual directory issue, though, print and postage kept rising, while regular advertising, following a trend affecting all print ventures, could not keep pace. The directory was losing money – dollars that came in from dues-paying members.

Faced with a budget already hammered by the recession, the MSBA’s Operations Committee voted in early 2009 to discontinue print production of the Bench & Bar directory. While costs were the immediate impetus, Bar leaders also recognized the opportunity to deliver comparable listings more efficiently to MSBA members.

As with the Jolly Troll and its dated menu and décor, our product and service standards have changed. Lawyers relocate more frequently than ever before, court personnel change, and someone always seems to be launching a new website or e-mail account. As our focus shifts from desktop paper to desktop monitors, a print directory becomes outdated ever more quickly. Published each January, the Bench & Bar directory issue was often out of date by February, with nothing coming along to replace it for another 11 months.

By repositioning listings on the Internet, we could provide more current listings for the nominal cost of pushing a few extra electrons out over the MSBA’s pipe. New admittees would appear closer to the time they were admitted, routine address changes would update regularly, and outside links would snare information directly from offices and agencies maintaining their own sites.

In January, we rolled out the 2010 edition of the directory – actually, an edition for 2010 that will keep growing each year. Look for it behind the permanent Bench & Bar button at mnbar.org, or under the “Connections” tab at practicelaw.org.

You’ll find listings for all current members of the MSBA. Unlike earlier online MSBA directories, this one allows you to run multiple searches. To reduce the risk of “harvested” listings landing in the hands of spammers, this portion of the site sits behind the same log-in system as other MSBA members-only services.

Among the offerings:

MSBA Connections: One-click access to member listings, together with links to MSBA Sections, Committees, District Bar Associations, and governing bodies.

Court Connections: Links to court websites and related material. Use tags and keywords – identical to those appearing at practicelaw.org – to refine your searches within the Minnesota Judicial System, State Boards and Offices, Federal Courts and Offices, and Minnesota Tribal Courts.

Community Connections: Links to Law Schools, Law Libraries, and Law-Related Organizations both local and national. Refine your searches by tag or keyword.

We have moved the content off of paper and onto the Web, and intend to continue growing the site with frequent updates and expanded lists of links. You can’t circle a number or rip out a page from this latest edition of the venerable Bench & Bar directory, but we’re hopeful that this more robust format will continue to connect you to colleagues, the courts, and the community.

1. “Coen brothers” — that was the first one.

2. The Jolly Troll restaurant featured bottomless hot trays of Scandinavian comfort food, with buffet tables topped by, well, trolls and other admittedly ethnocentric, politically incorrect dolls. In retrospect, it may have been a ptomaine smorgasbord with low-rent Animatronics, but every Minnesota child of a certain age remembers it.

3. One of the Jolly Troll restaurants was on Highway 12, along a stretch of sleek runway out of downtown Minneapolis that served for years until the Department of Transportation decided that an empty commuter lane would be preferable, and gave us I-394. Highway 12 ran out past County Road 18 – until that road became 169.

4. The Cooper Theatre was across the street on the southwest corner of Highway 12 and Turner’s Crossroads. The latter road still exists on the north side of I-394, but its southern stretch appears to be buried, like Troy, under Home Depot or something.

5. The Edina shopping center still stands, of course, but doesn’t enjoy the press garnished on that other retail center. Southdale should have snagged the moniker of “Mall of America” first.

6. Southdale’s wire-framed birdcage and bench-lined fish pond were as popular as that big department store that many Minnesotans can’t even mention anymore. Hint: Mary went there.

7. Younger readers may now play along with their own references to the Metrodome.

8. We’re almost done with the Twin Cities-based (mostly Minneapolitan) references. Promise. Send us yours from across the state. That’s the beauty of blogs.

9. We were almost done, but couldn’t close the browser on these Weatherball lyrics. They make us see red (which, when it comes to the Weatherball, is good).