Clear communication is necessary in any successful legal practice.

Abe Lincoln, FDR, Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes. What do these lawyers have in common? They never attended a single mandatory continuing legal education program. And you can see how that made them terrible attorneys, right? In last month’s column, I questioned the necessity of Supreme Court order No. 2025WI37, which will allow Wisconsin lawyers to receive continuing legal education credit for courses in cultural competency and reduction in bias. Gregg Herman is a neutral arbitrator and mediator at JAMS located in its Milwaukee office, specializing in resolution of family law disputes. A past chair of the ABA Family Law Section, Herman is a certified family law mediator, a senior Family Law trial Specialist by NBTA and an adjunct professor at Marquette Law School. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]. While for the moment taking these courses is voluntary, I predict that this rule is a first step for Wisconsin to join several other states to make them mandatory. I quoted the dissent by Justice Rebecca Bradley (joined by two other justices), where she wrote that absolutely no evidence shows that this type of requirement would be in the least bit effective. Well, let’s go a step further. Where’s the evidence that any mandatory CLE, including mandatory EPR, improves the practice of law? As I started out with, there was a time when we had no CLE. CLE began after World War II to acclimate attorneys returning to practice after a lengthy absence in the military and to meet the needs of increased numbers in the profession. It was voluntary. In 1947, the American Bar Association established an organization to promote a national program that included correspondence courses and encouraged state and local bar associations to promote CLE. By 1975, two states, Minnesota and Iowa, began requiring continuing legal education. Possibly inspired by our neighbors, Wisconsin created the “Board of Continuing Legal Education” effective Jan. 1, 1976, to administer the state Supreme Court's mandatory continuing legal education requirements. Almost 50 years later, can we say CLE benefits the practice and Wisconsin’s legal system? On the one hand, it seems evidence should be unnecessary because it’s obvious: Requiring lawyers to take courses on general law and ethics should make them better and more ethical lawyers. But does it really? Are lawyers better — or more ethical — than they were before mandatory CLE? While it seems apparent (and everyone with whom I’ve discussed this topic thinks it does), sometimes, the emperor has no clothes. Mandatory CLE does provide three positive results. First, it makes money for CLE providers, including the mandatory State Bar of Wisconsin, the largest CLE provider in the state offers four times as many hours as the next competitor (a happy coincidence). Second, it’s good public relations. We wouldn’t want a surgeon cutting on us if we thought they never learned a thing after medical school, and the same holds true for lawyers. Clients undoubtable feel more comfortable with lawyers who was required to brush up their knowledge and skills periodically. Third, a small number of lawyers are suspended each year for not complying with the reporting requirement. In the last published year for which data is available, out of 8,812 lawyers required to comply with mandatory CLE, 172 were suspended for failing to comply. 104 lawyers were reinstated (I’m guessing fairly promptly). These days, the “Board of Bar Examiners” maintains a seven-person full-time staff and a budget of nearly a million dollars (also funded through mandatory fees).  Is weeding out 68 lawyers a year, who would probably lose their license for other reasons anyway, worth a nearly $1 million annual budget? At most in person CLE courses, the vast majority of attendees seems to be paying more attention to their phones than to the speakers. The attention rate is undoubtedly even lower (lower than zero?) at online presentations. Most ethics courses are scare sessions telling lawyers they are about to be disbarred for heinous acts including (choose the date) sending or reading an missent fax; clicking on “reply all” for an email; or — horrors! — failing to completely proofread an AI-assisted brief. Here’s a practical idea: For ethics CLEs, after the requisite half-hour introducing the panel and reading their resumes, tell the audience: “Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Have a good day.” Eliminating mandatory CLE will never happen because it sounds like such an obviously good and necessary thing. But that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t happen.