How Lawyers Can Find and Evaluate Continuing Legal Education Courses | Explore Law Firms and Legal Advice

While states’ specific requirements vary considerably, every state requires licensed attorneys to complete continuing legal education, commonly called CLEs.

While many attorneys bristle at the CLE mandates, their complaints don’t mean they’re less obligated to fulfill those education requirements. Here are things to look for when it comes to choosing a CLE program, as well as some programs worth checking out.

When choosing CLE programs, “avoid doing what so many lawyers do: Wait until the last minute. Then you’re setting yourself up for the worst of possible situations,” says Rima Sirota, a professor of legal practice at Georgetown Law.

Attorneys should give themselves time to find programs that are meaningful to their practice or relate to an issue they are passionate about. They should consider what they want out of a course.

“What skills need sharpening, what knowledge do you need in the short term?” Sirota asks. By focusing on the near-term goals, attorneys are more likely to use what they’ve learned, thus retaining – and benefiting – from their study.

Ideally, programs should be more than a single session, have some element of interactivity and allow for meaningful follow-up. And by interactivity, “that does not mean a 10-minute Q&A,” Sirota says. “I’m talking about an opportunity to practice and use what you’re learning.”

Conferences hosted by universities and professional associations are often oriented to attorneys working within a particular field, so they tend to be more specialized and deeper examinations of relevant issues. A few to consider include these:

Members of the American Bar Association can choose from a library of more than 600 webinars and on-demand programs, and attorneys from all states can satisfy their CLE requirements with its offerings. Membership cost varies depending on an attorney’s practice. While a solo practitioner pays $150 for the year, a senior attorney at a small or midsize firm may pay $450 for a year’s membership.

Practicing Law Institute and Thomson Reuters West LegalEdcenter both offer thousands of CLE programs available on demand, and their libraries are regularly updated. But beyond a few free offerings and some scholarships, the pricing for hourly content and unlimited subscriptions is significantly higher than that of other providers. Practicing Law Institute charges $3,495, and Thomson Reuters charges $890 a year.

For attorneys who have many hours to complete but want a low-cost, one-stop solution that doesn’t require much research and switching between CLE providers, LexVid is hard to beat. LexVid’s inventory of topics varies depending on the state authorization, but it offers two hours for $20. Hawaiian attorneys can complete their required three hours for $24, while the 25-hour bundle for California attorneys is a bargain at $59 at the time of publication.

These free continuing legal education resources are worth considering.

Although CLE programs impact hundreds of thousands of attorneys and cost millions each year, there has been surprisingly little investigation on whether CLEs do what they are intended to do – increase attorney competence, reduce ethics violations and improve attorney well-being.

“It is astonishing given the size of the system that there has been so little study of whether and how it has an impact,” says Sirota, who has authored articles on the lack of support for CLEs’ efficacy.

Sirota has examined how other professions, such as medicine, address continuing education requirements, and she’s reviewed other empirical research on what constitutes effective adult education. And in light of the research in those other fields, “I think there’s pretty good reason to think that a lot of CLE courses do not impact attorney competence,” she says.

“That doesn’t mean that there is no good CLE course. But as a system, it is crying out loud for study and evaluation,” Sirota says.