ON A TUESDAY this August, the human resources director at a tech company in Southern NH wanted help classifying employee jobs, and requiring employees to keep time. She turned to an e-mail "listserv" founded by the Manchester law firm Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green and managed by James P. Reidy, an employment lawyer and partner at the firm. In the next two days, the HR director had received a dozen substantive responses by e-mail, including sample language she could use, and regulations she could cite.

The listserv, basically an online exchange for subscribers, is called NHLabornet, and it boasts 350+ subscribers, all of whom receive an e-mail publishing every question posed or answer posted to NHLabornet's "bulletin board."

Traffic is heavy: This spring, NHLabornet published its 10,000^th message. On average over the past 2 1/2 years, the listserv has seen 9 postings a day, each and every workday. Over the Labor Day period this year, there were 60 postings in four workdays. "Participation has exploded in the past few years," said Reidy, Labornet's chief moderator and head of SPB+G's Employment Law Group.

NHLabornet was founded in 1996 by a SPB+G associate, Tom Flygare, who was inspired by his previous membership in the pioneering listserv of the National Association of University and College Attorneys. Reidy assisted him in establishing NHLabornet, which first used an "ask the lawyers" format, and later helped evolve NHLabornet into an Internet discussion group. Two years into his involvement, Reidy assumed his current role of moderator.

Today, representatives of virtually all of New Hampshire's top employers are enrolled participants, or "'Netters." Membership is climbing steadily, said Reidy; new HR pros come on board almost daily.

Reidy is dismissive of the time it takes to moderate the bulletin board, which involves reviewing every posting before publishing it. "It's just like any other client-building activity, and you have to plan your days so that you don't neglect it," he said. He admits, however, that some of that activity doesn't get tended to until after midnight.

Sometimes Reidy's intervention is needed to "help posters tighten up their queries, and help them stay out of trouble when they forget their postings are neither private nor anonymous." Reidy often goes off-line to assist these subscribers, via personal e-mail.

Reidy's most humorous intervention as moderator "actually wasn't an intervention; it was a decision not to intervene," he said. A listserv participant, probably tired after a long workweek, was e-mailing a spouse or partner, taking the shortcut of keying off that partner's just-published posting and hitting "Reply" on it. She or he (Reidy won't say which) wrote "I'll probably get home first. I'm pouring myself a drink or two. If I'm passed out on the couch (nudge me and wake me)." The parenthetical language was in fact considerably more "romantic," said Reidy. Hitting "Reply" directed the suggestive e-mail to all 300+ members of NHLabornet, to their great amusement. Reidy doesn't recall that anyone complained that the moderator had not intervened.

In addition to the humorous times, there have also been many rewarding moments on the listserv as well, such as having a grassroots movement take off from a single posting, resulting in legislation that passed to relieve employers from some of their liability when responding to reference checks on former employees.

The more mundane is routine, such as an exchange this summer on permitting body art and piercings in the workplace. Among the dozen responses posted to a late August question about classifying employees and requiring timekeeping was an ad hoc 740-word mini-treatise on the differences when calling employees exempt, non-exempt, salaried or hourly - terms that confuse and confound all but the most seasoned HR people. Occasionally a hot-linked cite will be included in a response. Unlike some cyber-space resources, Reidy and his assistant Sandra Banks maintain an archive of responses and can retrieve past messages upon request by topic, date or author.

Reidy said that maintaining the listserv sometimes feels like a 24/7 job, but he has had significant help from other members of his firm's Employment Law and Benefits Group, including partners David McGrath, Mark Ventola and Elizabeth Bailey, and Diana Wieland, who is of counsel with the firm. Partner Alan Cleveland contributes responses from time to time, as do Sean Gorman, of counsel, and paralegal Wendy Mansback. Reidy, who is married and has four young children, no longer takes a laptop along on vacations with him and he removes himself from the e-mail routing list for NHLabornet as needed, something that any subscriber can do.

Participation in NHLabornet is open to HR professionals of all stripes, including service providers who pledge not to break the posted procedural rules, including brevity and a strict ban on solicitation of business. Even non-Sheehan lawyers contribute posts from time to time, but SPB+G and Reidy are understandably alert to the frequency of those. "Other law firms are free to create a similar listserv or invest time and money in other projects," Reidy said.

NHLabornet may be among the most time-consuming but rewarding client-development activities for Reidy and the Sheehan Employment Law Group. Reidy also is the author of the popular employer guide to state and federal employment laws, The Employment Law Guide (Slide Ruler), chairs the New Hampshire High Tech Council's Human Resources Exchange, and sits on the board of the Manchester Area Human Resources Association.

For its labors in maintaining the e-mail discussion group, Sheehan takes a low-key approach to calling attention to itself. The only reminder NHLabornet participants have of the law firm's sponsorship is a tagline on each posted message, reading "NHLABORNET, an online discussion group for HR professionals, is sponsored and maintained by Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green, PA, Attorneys at Law." Participants, once enrolled, don't hear from the firm again unless it's in the form of a broadcasted 'Net posting. There is a registered URL, or Web address, www.NHLabornet.com. It takes you directly to Sheehan Phinney's welcome page at www.Sheehan.com.

Reidy doesn't hesitate recommending the concept of a listserv to anyone who inquires. "It's really simple, it's just e-mail," he said. While anyone can see it's not, in fact, easy, given the hours of attention such a bulletin board requires of a moderator, it is considerably less challenging technically than an interactive Web site, and costs not nearly as much.

Subscribers using common e-mail systems, including Outlook, can have their e-mail program screen and sort messages from NHLabornet. Some screen for topics or keywords they're interested in exclusively. Except for the fact that an e-mail from NHLabornet shows the recipient as a member of the 'Net, rather than as an individual, it looks just like an e-mail sent to you personally by a compatriot in another organization (inside the message, full identification of the sender, by name and employer, is one of the rules of engagement).

The direct cost of maintaining NHLabornet is "minimal," said Reidy. Sheehan Phinney's in-house technical staff maintains the server and software without many demands from him, he says.

Reidy said other practice area leaders in his firm are considering starting their own listservs, including one that would enable dialogue between practitioners and state regulators. Reidy warns fellow lawyers everywhere, however, that if they emulate NHLabornet's efforts, they'd better be prepared to do the work - and stick with it for some time. "You'll earn zero credibility from starting a project like this and then abandoning it," he said.

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