Banish Bad CLEs Forever

The MCLE Board's Goal to Improve the Quality of CLE Courses

Have you ever been to a CLE so terrible it makes you want to give up law and try your hand in real estate?  Or been to one so good it renews your faith in your profession and puts an extra spring in your step?  The MCLE Board's mission is to ensure that WSBA members get first-rate continuing legal education – education that puts spring in your step and increasing competence in your practice.

One of the first projects that the Board undertook to realize this mission was to get feedback from members about their current experience at CLE courses.  On March 2, 2009 an email was sent to 13,009 WSBA members about a Survey Monkey (anonymous online) questionnaire to get this feedback.  Sixty-eight members completed the survey.  Sixty-two percent of the respondents were 50 or older and 32% of the respondents have been practicing law for 30 or more years. 

There is a link to the survey results in the column to the right.  Most of the members who responded to the survey were very positive about their experiences.  The courses they took gave them information and tools that were directly applicable to their practices.  They also gave feedback about what the CLE sponsor did that helped them learn the skill so that they could effectively apply it, including

• Not just being a "talking head"
• Providing demonstrations
• Providing "hands on" experience as a peer
• Providing practice tips
• Using video clips of movies involving the law
• Interacting with attendees

The survey respondents also provided more open-ended feedback to the MCLE Board about how to improve CLE courses available to WSBA members, including

• Materials should be distributed in advance of seminars.  The seminars should proceed from an assumption that the material has been read.  Working through a series of hypothetical problems based on the material, with broad audience participation, makes far more sense than the current format of most WSBA sponsored programs.
• CLEs need to fall into one of three categories: 

        a) "how-to" with forms, step-by-step, and nuts and bolts information and presentations; 
        b) "seminar" with full participation by attendees in discussions, role playing, etc. (i.e., college graduate course style as opposed to the lecture hall); or 
        c) "retreat-immersion" where attendees go for several days up to a week and spend the full allotted time immersing themselves in the subject with short lectures, breakout sessions, role playing, practical skills training, etc.  This would be especially effective for teaching/learning state and federal regulatory programs.

• More CLEs should address the role of law in our society and provide information about legal history.
• More nationally accredited CLE programs should be attracted to come to the Seattle area.

If you would like to let the Board know your thoughts about recent CLE courses you have taken, send an email to Kathy Todd at kathyt@wsba.org.  Feel free to do this at any time.  New MCLE rules and regulations went into effect in January 2009; our goal is that CLE presenters exceed these minimum standards.  It is for your benefit, so let us know your thoughts.