MCLE Board
The Washington Supreme Court entered order NO. 25700-A-1349 adopting the MCLE Board’s suggested amendment to the Admission and Practice Rule (APR) 11 ethics requirement, effective Sept. 1, 2022.
Licensed legal professionals in the state of Washington are required to continue their legal education throughout their careers in order to remain eligible to practice law. The Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Board plays a critical role in defining and determining compliance with the minimum education requirements. The Board meets five times a year to consider MCLE policy issues and review requests from legal professionals, including requests for waiver and extension of time to meet their minimum education requirements, and holds hearings on denied requests.
Board Members
Todd Alberstone, Chair │ M. Christopher Bueter │ Ayanna Colman │ Merri Hartse │ Efrem Krisher │ Robert Malae │ Asia N. Wright
Board of Governors Liaison: Serena Sayani & Kevin Fay
Contact the MCLE Board and Staff Liaison at MCLE@wsba.org
Preliminary Suggested Amendment to APR 11
The MCLE Board is considering an amendment to APR 11, which will allow tutors in the WSBA Law Clerk Program to receive MCLE teaching credit for their "personal supervision" of law clerks.
At its April 9, 2021 meeting, the MCLE Board began discussing the potential for tutors to claim MCLE credit for instruction time. The MCLE Board formed a work group, prepared a report and recommendation, posted the suggested amendment for public comment, and solicited feedback from the WSBA Board of Governors. At the WSBA Board of Governors meeting held on July 22, Todd Alberstone and Robert Malae presented the preliminary suggested amendment on behalf of the MCLE Board. The WSBA Board of Governors held a vote and decided to support the MCLE Board’s preliminary suggested amendment.
Taking into consideration the feedback and support from the WSBA Board of Governors, the MCLE Board made final edits to the suggested amendment redline and decided at their August meeting to move forward with the suggested amendment. The updated redline clarifies law clerk tutors are eligible for law and legal credit, in addition to “other” and ethics credits, by stating clerks are participating in courses. Additionally, the new redline creates a new approved activity category, APR 11(e)(10), for law clerk tutoring instead of having the credit be consolidated with the law school teaching category, APR 11(e)(6). Edits are intended to assist with implementing the suggested amendment and do not impact the spirit in which the original revisions were made. The MCLE Board plans to share the final language of the suggested amendment to the Board of Governors in September before sending it to the Supreme Court this October.
For more information, please see:
Memo to the WSBA Board of Governors – Sept. 7, 2022
Memo to the WSBA Board of Governors – June 24, 2022
Meeting Dates and Minutes
2022–2023Oct. 7, 2022 Jan. 13, 2023 April 17, 2023 May 19, 2023 Aug. 4, 2023 | 2021–2022Aug. 5, 2022 |
Sept 7, 2022 Supreme Court Meeting |