This month’s theme is ethics – and many of you are madly looking for an easy way to get those ethics credits you need to complete your requirements for the year. The King County Law Library offered a couple of Ethics CLEs a few years ago, but now everyone seems to want to do the courses online via the Internet, rather than come into a library and sit for an hour and half. So, this month I am going to give you suggestions of a number of web sites where you can sign up, pay your fee and even do the lessons at your own pace - listen to them as a download (podcasted, anyone?) – or, find a simultaneous webcast that you can attend from the comfort of your office.

Start at the Washington State Bar Association web site at: http://www.wsba.org and simply choose the CLE link near the top of the page.  Scroll down the page and select the WSBA-CLE Online link, which will lead you to (on demand): A/V CLE credits available at your convenience, via the Internet. This page links to the catalog of courses, which includes 25 offerings on Ethics and the ability to complete all six ethics credits online. They even promise that a record of the courses you take will be retained in your account. You will be able to retrieve the record for your CLE credits report for three years from the date you purchase the course. This is convenience at your fingertips. Most of the courses are recordings of previous live presentations.

You can also visit the King County Bar Association web site at: www.kcba.org, choose CLE near the top of the page and find audio tapes, cds, video and DVDs that you can purchase and use to fulfill your credit requirements. The selection here is limited, but there was at least one available audio program on ethics.

The American Bar Association has a Center for CLE, where they present CLEs through a variety of vehicles, from the traditional to the latest such as videoconferencing, teleconferences, and webcasting. The CLEs here are often also recordings of live programs. The ABA is even offering preloaded podcasts for CLE use. Start at http://www.abanet.org/cle/ or at http://www.abanet.org/cle/ecle/home.html. The latter site has a subject listing for Ethics, with numerous electronically based seminars. The webinars – that is, live presentations via the computer – imitate the in-person seminars attorneys are used to attending. Attorneys can listen to the podcast-based seminars as they drive to work. The ABA even provides the listening device. The CLE Now! Link has complimentary CLEs for ABA members, while their other online offerings are paid products.

Law.com, from ALM Properties, currently publishes national and regional magazines and newspapers, including The American Lawyer®, Corporate Counsel® and The National Law Journal®. The www.law.com  site has a CLE center composed of many online options for CLE credits. If you choose the CLE link at thee top of the page you can do a search for possible sessions by the State and Subject you need. For instance, if you do a search on Washington State with the subject Ethics, you will find an audio program that you can purchase that will provide 3 ethics credits.

Lexis also has a web site at: http://www.lexisnexis.com/conferences/ where online and in-person CLEs are listed. The selection of online CLEs is not as extensive, and somehow the web page – if you try to make your selection by state - errors out. But if you browse through their listings you can find some applicable online CLEs. Many of their CLEs are cross-listed at the Law.com web site.

But the largest collection of online CLEs is the collection available through the WestLegalEdcenter at: http://westlegaledcenter.com/home/homepage.jsf. The statement on their opening page says: “With West LegalEdcenter you now have immediate access to the largest, most current collection of online CLE programs available on the Internet.  Our CLE catalog includes both live webcast and previously-recorded online programming, in both video and audio formats.” Choose the state and the area of practice or specialty credits such as Ethics and the site lists over 200 available programs, with (at the time of writing) 16 upcoming live webcasts. It should be easy to find at least one class that interests you. 

Not all states accept online CLE credits, but Washington does. So, if you have put off getting those Ethics credits you need, it is easy to find online sessions to fulfill your need.