I spent much of my day today in a mandatory legal ethics course for lawyers recently admitted to the D.C. Bar. The program was not especially useful, despite the best efforts of the people running it. And as I sat there letting minute after minute of my life tick away, I did a little people watching. Unsurprisingly, no one seemed to be paying attention: many were playing games on their phones, some had newspapers, and one guy spent the entire session turned with his back to the speakers, chatting up the girl behind him. A few of the comments from the program moderators suggested that even the D.C. Bar people seem to recognize that the session was a largely fruitless waste of time.
The whole thing made me wonder: why do lawyers put themselves through this? Why do we have mandatory ethics courses, mandatory continuing legal education (“MCLE”), and other “mandatory education?” I understand what the point is supposed to be, in that such sessions are supposed to keep you current in the law. But in reality, most lawyers I know gain little to nothing from MCLE and treat it as a nuisance as enjoyable as a colonoscopy. Indeed, a recent survey of lawyers in one state revealed that “most respondents felt attorneys [in MCLE] are there in body but not mind or spirit, and are most often focused on their ‘Blackberries,’ proving a distraction to those wanting to learn.” Another state, in the course of recommending an MCLE requirement, admitted that “empirical data affirming the effectiveness of mandatory CLE do not appear to exist.”
The programs I’ve been to (which is admittedly a small number) haven’t really taught me much of anything. Even when the topic is something I’m interested in, I’ve often found the speakers offer little more than what is already widely known on the subject. I have never left a program thinking that I am better able to serve a client because of something I learned. A little time on SCOTUSblog is often more fruitful in that regard. (I mean, c’mon, how much are you really going to get out of “Ethics Funhouse! The Frightening Legal Ethics Game Show?”) Indeed, if I relied on the information I heard in these sessions without checking everything out on my own, I would probably end up committing malpractice.
More states have MCLE than mandatory continuing medical education. Lawyers like to think of themselves as important, but (unless you’re a criminal lawyer) you don’t typically hold someone’s life in your hands. So why do we require more training than doctors? Perhaps because there is a public perception that lawyers are more predisposed to rule-breaking and misbehavior than doctors. Yet even if one grants that lawyers have ethical issues, MCLE cannot be characterized as anything more than an empty gesture. A lawyer who wants to steal is not going to keep on the straight-and-narrow because he sat in a hotel ballroom one morning and heard lectures telling him not to. In other words, if ethical issues and knowledge deficiency are really problems in the legal profession, MCLE doesn’t do enough. If they aren’t real issues, MCLE is entirely unneeded.
One other thing needs to be noted: MCLE is really friggin’ expensive.
Sadly, it seems like MCLE is here to stay, mainly because states justify it by noting that many other states impose it. That makes little sense. If we’re going to continue wasting thousands of hours and millions of dollars on this activity, we should spend a little of that time considering whether we’re getting anything out of it.
-Michael
Update: It looks like the article was picked up and posted on an MCLE Facebook page (who knew?). I appreciate the comments and folks certainly raised some good points. One critique that stung a little bit, however, was this one:
“[A]n attorney who consistently attends ‘boring’ CLEs should probably question his judgment and choices instead. A few duds occasionally? Sure, but not every time.”
I would suggest a couple reasons why the CLEs I discussed above seem to be “ugh-tastic.” First, as I noted, I’ve attended a limited number of courses, so I might have just gotten unlucky. Second, many of my CLE credits were mandatory selections to fulfill “new attorney” bar requirements; as such, I had no choice in attending them.
Still, I’m not sure I can agree that there are only “a few duds.” With all due respect to CLE providers (as I’m sure there are more than a few good ones), I don’t often hear great reviews of CLE from more experienced lawyers, either. This seems particularly so in the case of “traditional” CLE courses (hotel ballroom, standard lecture, a handout, etc.) as opposed to less-traditional formats that also happen to count for CLE credit (like those mentioned by Susan in the comments). Despite all the grumbling, the system marches on. I wrote this post to suggest that we seem to have fallen into a certain standard formula for what constitutes CLE, when we might want to consider whether that formula (including the mandatory element of it) is achieving the desired results.
But I may be wrong. I’d love to hear more thoughts and comments.
I can write this post for you, much more efficiently:
Should Mandatory Continuing Legal Education Be Eliminated?
Yes.
-Susan
Good points, Michael. This topic has been debated over the years with similar observations. I’ve weighed in on past discussions but have largely given up on that since, as you noted, MCLE is here to stay.
So instead, I engage in conversations about how the industry can better serve attorneys. It’s def not a smooth conversation
Good piece. I’ll post to the MCLE Facebook Page and see where the conversation goes. Should be interesting.
Full Disclosure: I am a CLE program director (though the opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer). I also practiced law for nearly a decade.
Just as with a lawyer trying a case, a musician giving a concert, a professor teaching a class, and Tiger Woods playing a round of golf, we in CLE have good days and the occasional not-so-good days. (Perhaps the Tiger Woods analogy is inapt, as Tiger’s not-so-good days have been more the rule than the exception lately. But I digress.)
It is certainly true that some CLE seminar attendees do not give speakers their full attention. This is unfortunate, and truly makes for a wasted day for them. But is this necessarily an indictment of the program, or should the inattentive attendee shoulder some responsibility for her rudeness as well? CLE professionals and speakers are constantly trying to hit the “sweet spot” between content that is educational enough that it will enlighten, and entertaining enough that it will keep the audience engaged. Admittedly, some topics, speakers and formats are more successful at this than others. But, if a seminar attendee can truly say that she paid attention during a program yet heard nothing that she didn’t already know, then I’d suggest that she signed up for the wrong seminar. I’d also suggest that she is quite extraordinary, as even CLE speakers – who are typically at the top of their field – routinely report that they learned something during the preparation of their session. For my part, when I was in practice, I don’t recall ever leaving a program without taking at least a new nugget or two of useful knowledge back to the office with me. And, in practice, sometimes it is that one nugget of knowledge that can make the difference between a happy or an unhappy outcome for a client.
As to the expense, well, yes – high quality CLE seminars are rarely inexpensive. However, CLE is not exempt from the adage that “you get what you pay for”. Overhead aside, the costs that non-profit CLE providers incur in renting space, hiring videographers, supplying refreshments, printing materials, marketing programs and (occasionally) paying professional speakers are likewise considerable – and are not always covered by registration revenues. Non-profit CLE providers do not have the luxury of charging what the market will bear – they seek to charge what is necessary in order to be able to provide the programs. Given that the charge is typically less than the amount of a single billable hour, it seems a worthy investment.
It’s not the CLE’s themselves that are the problem. It’s the mandatory requirement.
Some of the events I go to also happen to count for CLE credits. I would’ve gone whether or not I received any silly CLE credits for it, so the extra hour or two is just an awesome bonus.
And although I have yet to go to any of them, my office has some how-to guides that other attorneys have received from CLE courses, and those little notebooks have been great for coaching me though legal issues I’ve otherwise never encountered. In the future, those programs are the ones I’ll try and be attending — because yes, they would be useful to me.
But I’d be going whether or not I got CLE credit for it.
So I don’t think Mike was trying to say CLE seminars are, in themselves, useless. But requiring attorneys to do X many hours of them is worse than useless — attorneys that are not interested in learning something new are not going to be inspired to broaden their horizons simply because they need 12 CLE hours.
And yes, I’m probably just slightly bitter right now, because it’s almost October, and I have not met all my hours. So pretty soon I’m going to have to waste some time on some crappy online CLE program to make up the difference.