The American Law Institute-American Bar Association Continuing Professional Education (ALI-ABA) and the Association for Continuing Legal Education (ACLEA) convened the ambitious and necessary Critical Issues Summit, Equipping Our Lawyers: Law School Education, Continuing Legal Education, And Legal Practice in the 21st Century on October 15-17, 2009. ACLEA tasked several of the continuing legal education (CLE) luminaries in attendance with reporting on discussions in the workshops, break-out sessions and throughout the Summit on matters related to the business of CLE.
On the agenda for ACLEA’s upcoming 46th Mid-year meeting is ALI-ABA/ACLEA Critical Issues Summit Workshop: Where Do We Go From Here?. The Summit and this workshop is a unique opportunity for attorneys, providers, administrators and CLE professionals to have their voices heard on these and other issues.
I’ve summarized the ACLEA CLE Summit Reports (available to members) identifying the eight issues outlined below. With your help, I will attempt to cover each of these issues during the six weeks leading up to the conference. Please share your issues, concerns, ideas, and recommendations by commenting below. I will also solicit comment on Twitter and Facebook and use the information to present additional observations and ideas.
| Issue | Discussion |
|---|---|
| Quality of Provider/ Courses | CLE programs will have an evaluation component that will measure the attendees’ absorption of information and the provider’s effectiveness in the delivery of the information. Providers will need to direct increased resources including funding to new underserved and under-resourced practitioners. There will continue to be tension between CLI (Continuing Legal Information) and CLE as providers struggle to be more learner-focused in an environment where it is often more expedient to provide information rather than true education. CLE providers and organizations such as ACLEA will try to develop standards and encourage others to adopt. Be more aware of the learning models preferred and required by the different generations of attorneys. |
| Professional Skills/Core Competency | Traditional CLE may begin to include more and more skills-based training as attorneys move between practice areas and practice environments. Competencies should also be thought of as tiers, steps, roles, career stages and be flexible in their application. Work with regulators and their boards to help insure that the “skills” programs receive MCLE credit. No one size fits all: The legal profession will continue to become increasingly diverse. With differences in demographics (e.g. generations, gender, socioeconomic background), different law school training, different work experiences (e.g. big firm, small firm, in-house, government), there will be a continuing need for CLE organizations to provide a variety of training (both skills and substantive) and in a variety of formats. Core Competencies - A Model Skills Template drafted in the mode of a ‘Model Rule’, which establishes a baseline of proficiencies young attorneys need to be successful could be beneficial for everyone. |
| Faculty Skills | Teach the Teacher: Guidelines and training that focuses on improving teaching skills for CLE speakers to enhance the quality of CLE. |
| Bridge-the-Gap/Mentoring | Traditional ‘Bridge the Gap’ models will likely give way to various types of mentoring or apprenticeship programs. Some states have replaced ‘Bridge the Gap’ with mandatory mentoring programs designed to match new admittees with experienced practicing attorneys. |
| Uniformity | Although many (but not all) are in favor of some uniformity between states, there are serious obstacles to attaining uniform mcle regulations. Among those obstacles are political, economic, and demographic issues. Serious divisions make it unlikely that uniform regulations will happen anytime soon. In addition, providers have their own set of agendas and varying business models that impact some of these decisions. Reciprocity for accredited sponsors, establishing of and adoption by accrediting entities. Prominent CLE organizations should identify the differences and similarities between state regulations and begin to develop model uniform regulations |
| Accreditation / Standards | Develop standards for providing CLE in a variety of formats. Encourage CLE regulators to grant accreditation skills training, technology, law office management, human resources skills, and training in general business principles. Encourage your regulators to make better use of technology in an effort to provide “compliance assurance services.” Encourage regulators/governing bodies to update the definition of acceptable content for CLE programs to include courses and delivery methods that can be approved. Organizations should lobby to have the MCLE rules allow for practice management skills to be included in CLE awards. |
| Delivery of CLE | Online, audio/video will continue to grow with less emphasis on multi-day programs aside from the Annual Meeting. The method of delivery controversy will fade as younger attorneys expect and drive the use of technology based CLE |
| Collaboration / Communication | Develop collaborative model in which providers, regulators, and attorneys discuss issues and concerns about MCLE rules, expectations, and realities. Continue to work toward improved relationship between regulators and CLE providers. |
