Yesterday I was interviewed on VoiceAmerica.com internet radio (huge by the way) by Cindy Ratkowitz on her “Stars of PR” program.  Cindy is a top-notch PR professional, having ran Playboy Enterprises’ Public Relations, Promotions and Modelling department for more than 15 years.

Cindy has been hosting her radio show for several years and her progfram was mentioned by PR News as “filling a void in the public relations business.”  Google Cindy Rakowitz for an amazing list of her accomplishments.

Cindy also is a co-founder of Blackman Ratkowitz PR which provides various Public Relations, Public Affairs, Marketing and Business Development related services as well as corporate communications consulting/coaching.

And for those of you that have followed my “Public Speaking for Business Development” posts and webcasts, I got this interview with Cindy after speaking at a Century City ProVisors monthly meeting.  One of the members of the audience, Todd Moster of Moster Legal Placement, suggested we have lunch and we connected! Todd, a former attorney, is about to publish a light hearted, informative book on Interview Techniques.  Todd connected me with Cindy and voila! a radio interview on my favorite topics – Public Speaking and CLE programming.

In the first segment we spoke about what CLE is and little bit about the ongoing debate regarding whether CLE requirements should be standardized across the country for better quality programs and more consistency.  I believe it should, to cut down on red tape for attorneys and CLE providers, but of course I’m a bit worried about who does that standardizing!  

If you are interested in more information about that particular topic, you might want to check out the Equipping Our Lawyers website.  Equipping our Lawyers is a joint effort between the American Bar Association, ACLEA, ALI-ABA, some large law firms and various law schools and other CLE providers and its focus is to improve the law school education experience as well as continuing legal education.

In the second segment, Cindy asked about the common mistakes public speakers make and we both agreed about the negative issues related to using Power Point and the now well known backlash.  What’s interesting, however, is that a lot of attorneys who attend our CLE programs still expect Power Point.  So if you’re going to use it, make sure you know how and remember it is a Visual Aid, it is not your presentation.

In the remaining portions of the program, we spoke about improving your organization, better introductions, how to handle hostile questions from an audience and how to conclude.

You can listen to the audio recording in Cindy’s archive on VoiceAmerica.  Update: Here is the direct link to the recording “Do you know your CLEs?” (not a great title, I know).