Welcome back to Lawyers & Liquor on this the first posting day of the year 2019. I, the Boozy Barrister, hope you all enjoyed your evening of watching the clock count down to midnight and your holiday spent in the office behind a locked door frantically catching up on all of the end of the month shit that you’re expected to do as a practitioner of law.
Last time we discussed CLE hours, and that kicked me off in a whole new thing we’ll continue today. Meanwhile, I finally verified that the CLE hours I gained over the past weekend by sitting in a crowded room and listening to people drone the fuck on and on about topics that were, at best, barely within the wheelhouse of the type of law I practiced.
And isn’t that just about the truth of the matter? I mean, the whole purpose behind the CLE program is to make sure the public received services from attorneys that have remained up to date on the practice of law and the requirements related thereto. You certainly don’t want some dipshit counselor who may or may not believe Reagan is still president citing case law that’s been overturned for two fucking decades, right? So, I mean, making attorneys scramble like chickens with their heads cut off every year to get those hours together, that’s a good thing, right? It keeps us honest.
First, never use the words “honest” and “attorney” together again, people will think there’s something wrong with you. Second, the mandatory CLE requirements are, in and of themselves, problematic even when looked at in the light of their alleged purpose of ensuring attorneys remain up to date on the law. And we’re gonna talk about some of those problems today.
Continue reading “Constant Low Effort, Part 2: The Practical Problems with CLE Requirements”