The Ohio Supreme Court will ask for public comment until Aug. 1 on proposed amendments to the continuing legal education (CLE) rules and regulations, which include reducing CLE minimum program time from 60 minutes to 30 minutes.

Currently, a program must be at least 60 minutes long to qualify for CLE.  The Ohio State Bar Association (OSBA) and the Supreme Court Judicial College have requested the change.

The OSBA points out the need to recognize that workloads and the pressure to attract new, and to maintain existing, business affect lawyers' time.

The proposed amendments also include a stipulation that qualified live webinars no longer would be subject to the 12-hour cap per reporting period on self-study activities. In order to be approved as a live webinar under these regulations, the sponsor must demonstrate that the webinar is sufficiently interactive.

The proposed amendment would also make an attorney or judge, who is an adjunct or part-time professor, eligible to receive three credit hours of CLE for each semester hour of a course taught at an ABA-accredited law school the first time the course is taught by them.

Comments to the proposed amendments should be submitted in writing or via email by Aug. 1 to:

Gina Palmer, Attorney Services Director
65 South Front St., Fifth Floor
Columbus, Ohio 43215-3431
or
gina.palmer@sc.ohio.gov

In addition to the proposed amendments, the Court announced approval of a new category of self-study CLE called electronic interactive skill-based activity (EISBA).

It’s an individualized CLE activity in which an attorney or judge participates outside the standard classroom or seminar setting. EISBA activities are flexible and allow for engagement whenever the attorney or judge chooses.

PDF files may be viewed, printed, and searched using the free Acrobat^® Reader
Acrobat Reader is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.