Get an established member to email a request to Chelsea or email and introduce yourself with all the pertinents: who you are, who you work for, what email address you want your membership associated with, etc.
Chelsea Baldwin, the owner of the Google Group, is trying to keep bots, complete internet strangers, and law students out of the group. However, almost anyone who has an articulable connection to the academic support and bar preparation community, provided they are employed in a role that provides academic support or bar preparation services or they are seeking employment in such a role, and that they have graduated from law school, is granted admission.
Generally, applications are approved within one business day; however, there are exceptions, especially for people who don't provide identifying information as part of their join request.
Nope. Although reasonable efforts have been made to protect individuals' data privacy with the tools provided by Google Groups, it is possible some members of the group have joined for data-mining possibilities. It is the internet, conduct yourself accordingly.
Ah, the joys of proprietary freemium systems. Google groups is a Google/Alphabet corp product offered for free. There are numerous configuration possibilities, a google group can be nothing but a listserv, nothing but a discussion board requiring a log in, or both. When setting up the group, I elected to enable both functions. Thus, regardless of who your employer's email solution is hosted by, you can receive emails from the group because it has the listserv functionality.
But, in order to access the archives, you need a Google account (not a gmail account, although many people have gmail + Google attached to the same user name). If your employer uses Google workspace as its email provider, you're covered and can access the archives with your work account. If your institution uses Microsoft or a different hosting service, you've got some options:
1) Create a Google account using your work email address as the user name but DO NOT enable gmail. This will get you access to the archive and also allow you to maintain a divide between work and personal, if that's how you roll. (This is my solution I use for myself. Side benefit: I can use the collaborative former gsuite apps with students who prefer to work within Google's system over Microsoft's and don't have to share any personal or proliferating email addresses. They share with my work email and I get access. Moreover, when I changed employers in 2022, I just updated my user name, kept my content and access, and moved on with minimal data loss.)
2) Join the google group with both your work email (delivery option "every email") and personal gmail/google workspace account (delivery option "no email") so the listserv content comes to your work inbox and you can access the archive as needed without duplicate emails. (To the best of my memory, there are a couple dozen members who choose this solution).
3) Pretend there isn't an archive capability and just use the listserv.
We don't really know. In response to inquiries, CK stated that they experienced a "catastrophic data center failure." It took several months for them to confirm that there was no salvaging the listserv and that they were unwilling to continue providing the server space for the listserv, and by that time, the Google group had decent membership from the asp/bp community spread throughout the country.
As people may recall, Summer 2020 was the first summer of the covid-19 pandemic, and things were chaotic all around the world. Given that administration of the bar exams was evolving on a day-to-day basis in response to the pandemic, it was clear the community needed a viable method of sharing information about the changes in as close to real time as practical. So, Chelsea started a Google group to fill the information void because the price was right (free) and it was a platform she had familiarity with so set up and deployment required very little time. She sent notification to a handful of community members at other law schools and asked them to forward the information about the Group in phone-tree style.
Google groups provides several delivery options. You can receive "each email," a "digest," "abridged," or "no email."
The Google group acts as a traditional listserv so that people can receive email without ever accessing the group via a browser. But, it also has the capacity to provide these different subscription levels AND provides archival access to those who have Google accounts.
I, Chelsea, acknowledge there are a number of people in the community who share this perspective. Unfortunately/Fortunately, we’re a pretty fluid community, and we have people crossing the membrane between school-based & commercial bar prep in either direction all the time, so keeping on top of who is reading from under which hat is simply not something I can take on. For gatekeeping access to the group, I’m trying to keep students and complete internet strangers out of the group without excluding people who find themselves temporarily removed from the community due to unemployment.
If you want to post exclusively to the members of AASE or the AALS section, you will need to log in to their respective websites and post through their message boards.