Do CLE requirements affect bar size? New working paper explores
When a state requires lawyers to take continuing legal education classes, is access to justice affected? A new paper claims that the number of lawyers with active licenses declines in states with CLE requirements.
However, the paper also says the reduction in the legal workforce might nevertheless have “minimal effects” on access to justice. The research, which hasn’t been pubished yet, was conducted by Kyle Rozema, a professor and co-director of the JD/PhD program and academic placement at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
Entitled “How Do Continuing Education Requirements Affect a Workforce? Evidence from the Legal Profession,” the paper sets out to study how CLE requirements affect the size, the composition and the quality of the legal profession in the United States. Rozema has presented his research at academic conferences and law school workshops.
According to the research, CLE requirements cut the number of licensed lawyers in a state by 5%. However, Rozema tells the ABA Journal that CLE requirements “don’t seem to affect whether lawyers with a meaningful legal practice in a state maintain a license.” He says the requirements “do seem to affect whether some retired lawyers retain an active license and whether out of state lawyers obtain multiple licenses.”
Rozema also concludes that there is “some evidence” that CLE requirements disproportionately burden lawyers in rural areas and solo practice “who are more likely to serve communities with fewer legal options.”
Most states require CLE for lawyers to maintain their licenses on active status. States vary in the number of hours of education required and the topics to be studied. However, the paper notes that many jurisdictions require lawyers to complete “between 10 and 15 hours of CLE each year.”
According to the paper, Rozema found that lawyers were “5% less likely to be disciplined the year after CLE compliance.”
The research relies on a statistical analysis of data between 1970 and 2019, particularly examining before and after states adopted requirements for CLE.
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