Let’s talk about CLE, mandatory CLE.
Nothing could be as unmitigated a failure as mandatory CLE.

Are lawyers more lawyerly? No.
Are lawyers better educated? No.
Are legal malpractice claims down? To the contrary.
What about malpractice insurance premiums? Are you nuts?
Are disbarments down? Nope.
Are ethics complaints down? No siree bub.

Does the obligation to pucker-up and lend lip-service to the imposition of this nonsense overwhelm overstressed, overworked, overextended people who would rather spend the time with their neglected children and spouses (or for that matter getting an overdue root canal)? Yes.

And CLE transforms otherwise honest lawyers into the equivalent of junior undersecretaries addressing the politburo during the plenary session of the Seventh Party Congress: “Yesss Comrades – a most excellent and necessary educational tool to advance the Five Year Plan.” [Now please to clap endlessly].

We must all toe the party line in public. But any practicing American lawyer who tells you in private that CLE has any value whatsoever is a goddamned liar, or a psychotic, or a shareholder in a certified CLE provider. Usually all three. CLE is an unconscionable scam.

I got my first inkling when I attended New Jersey’s mandatory, on-site CLE training for newly admitted lawyers in early 1988. The equipment --Big Screen TVs, blue-ray disk readers, an 8 track tape deck -- somehow malfunctioned, and I sat in an auditorium with 1200 highly educated, newly admitted novices staring at 3 BIG TVs broadcasting… static.

We got welcomed and introduced by a human during the first two minutes, and then we watched and listened to static for three solid hours. Static, not blurred images, not “hard to see” pictures, just static – accompanied by the sound of… static.

I finished Robert Caro’s THE POWER BROKER, took a lunch break, bought a copy of The New Yorker, and came back for another two hours of Updike and such, with static, then called it a day.

That’s how the conspiracy began for me. We all of us kept quiet. No one said a thing. No one complained. The ‘monitor’ or ‘host’ or ‘master of ceremonies’ said, “you’ve just got to get thru this, it's mandatory. You don’ t want to have to come back here, do you?” Da Tovarich – to the greater glory of CLE.

There are at least 1199 practicing lawyers  out there who know exactly what I am talking about. And it’s been downhill CLE-wise since then. I never really appreciated the soothing aesthetic quality of static, until I had to attend a CLE seminar where the equipment worked.

For  over 30 years I have wasted uncounted money and countless hours half-listening (not really) to blatherers – some of them, I am ashamed to say, ordained members of the judiciary -- as they droned on endlessly, about some obscure spec of legal arcana. Of interest to precisely no one (including the speaker) and readily available on Westlaw should such a need arise. Not a chance.

And then there are the perennial proposed amendments to the F.R.Civ.P. that so enthrall our federal magistrates – the busboys of the federal judiciary. I have to tell you guys – and now I’m only talking to the men -- that we have perfected a curse first practiced among the Tree People of West Orange which results in the accursed having to pee at least half-a-dozen times more than usual instead of sleeping through the night: He who dribbles CLE will drip in his drawers, and have that unmistakable feeling that he just can’t get empty.

You bored everyone stiff Yer Honors: We cursed you.

The effect of the Tree People’s curse on lady judges is similar – you pee when you sneeze or laff, and it leaves a little darker patch on the back of your robes. Be careful how you exit the bench. There is no cure, unless you never speak or attend another CLE conference – and vote against any continuation of such programs or requirements should the opportunity arise.

The ABA and suchlike: you parasites suck at the core of evil. How dare you republish the same 10 articles every five years as a new $135.00 book ($85.00 for members) for which you pay the authors (the lowest level law student interns toiling in the crypts under some of our best firms) nothing.

Y’all provide just what we need as hardworking lawyers – expensive air-travel on weekends, for ruined days at conventions in Akron and Atlanta, with hours and hours spent in overpriced hotel basement ballrooms, fueled by atrocious coffee and carb-rich snax, stunned into stupefaction by narcotic power point presentations, which we could only access (to sign the sheets for all 4 days) by walking through corridors lined with leechlike consultants.

For you and your CLE convention planning kin WE [there are millions of us standing shoulder to shoulder in silent ranks just outside that door] came up with an extra special curse: something exotic, something foreign, with a touch of intrigue, COVID. [CLE Obligations Void Individual Dignity.]

Sure, some people had to die -- almost all of them Trump-sucking Republicans and their families. What can I say… WORTH IT!   By the way, Omicron is the 15th letter of the TWENTY FOUR LETTER Greek Alphabet.  See you next… never.

And now hats-off to the avenging attorneys who scribbled the “secret code” on the cassette taped CLE seminars on file at most county law libraries. Lawyers still using cassette tapes – that should tell you something.

And let’s take just a moment to send kudos to the hacker who came up with that App that sends an “I’m still sitting here listening attentively” signal during the on-line bilge-splashes that pass for CLE now. The fiendish cunning. Do you think they’ve caught on yet over at the Disciplinary Committee? They do have an internet machine on the information superhighway you know.

Fact is, no one gives a shit as long as that $10.00 fee per credit gets paid to the Commonwealth, or the Governor’s brother-in-law continues to reap-in, and kickback the boodle that legal greybeards fork over so that their associates can listen in to some crusty old worthy bloviate about the latest twists to Disciplinary Rule 8.1.9.g and the contradictory rulings in Montana and Ohio.

And to all those state senator’s relatives “working” at the Enforcement Division of the Disciplinary Committees in Trenton, and Albany and Harrisburg: losing records, miscalculating fees, misplacing letters and complaining about the drudgery of their existence. Join us comrades, or stock-up on Depends.

End CLE now, or the curses will keep on coming.