Credit where it’s due: the unlikely origins of continuing legal education
Credit where it’s due: the unlikely origins of continuing legal education
We thought it would be fun to learn more about the beginnings of the industry we all work in.
Below, we review the three overlapping phases of CLE in the U.S.: voluntary training in the 1930s, expanded development after World War II, and the shift to mandatory requirements that occurred largely in the 1970s.
Early roots (1930s)
Before formal CLE, lawyers kept current through bar association lectures, law school extension courses, and apprenticeship-style learning. It wasn’t until the early 1930s that the first programs dedicated to continuing legal education began to appear — built on the premise that law school taught doctrine but not practice, so practitioners needed hands-on instruction in how to actually handle transactions and cases.
That same period brought sharply expanded federal regulation, with the creation of the SEC and NLRB. Securities, labor, and administrative law changed so quickly that even experienced lawyers needed ongoing education to keep their knowledge current. Tax practice was expanding as well, and specialized programs such as law school tax institutes appeared in the early 1940s.
The post-war catalyst (1940s–1960s)
The real institutional genesis came after World War II. Thousands of lawyers returned from military service after years away from practice — during which law had changed considerably, especially in administrative law, tax, and labor. To meet that need, the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association formed a joint committee on continuing legal education in 1947, which became ALI-ABA, the first national CLE organization. California’s Continuing Education of the Bar program launched around the same time.
These programs were framed as a refresher for returning veterans, but they established a larger idea: that legal education should continue throughout a career. In 1958 and again in 1963, ALI-ABA convened the Arden House conferences, bringing together bar leaders, judges, and educators to define CLE’s purpose and structure. Many state bars and university-affiliated programs followed. Participation was still voluntary.
The move to mandatory CLE (1970s)
Two pressures drove the shift to mandatory CLE in the 1970s. First, concerns about lawyer competence were becoming more public — Chief Justice Warren Burger’s remarks in the early 1970s questioned the trial advocacy skills of many practicing attorneys. Second, Watergate, in which many of the central figures were lawyers, focused national attention on legal ethics and pushed professional responsibility into the curriculum.
In 1975, Minnesota and Iowa became the first states to adopt mandatory CLE. Other states followed through the late 1970s and 1980s. The ABA issued a Model Rule for MCLE in 1986, which helped standardize hour requirements, accreditation, and reporting, and revised it substantially in 2017. Today, nearly every state has some form of mandatory CLE, with specialty credit requirements that have expanded over time to include ethics, elimination of bias, mental health and substance use, and technology competence.
CLE started as a practical, market-driven response to the gap between law school and practice. It became institutionalized because of the needs of returning veterans, and it became mandatory because of competence and ethics concerns in the 1970s. We hope this gives you some interesting context for the industry we all contribute to every day.
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