Since 2014, I have been a member of the Virginia Continuing Legal Education (CLER) program. I love the community and the people who participate and I am honored to participate in this program.
This is a big moment in the history of this program. The purpose of this website is to educate folks on the state of the state of Virginia. I hope you have enjoyed it and that your participation has inspired others to do the same.
A number of our former members have already posted on the site and we will continue to post information on the program, which has a very active online presence.
We are continuing to create new content and invite new members to join. If you have not yet registered, you can do so here. If you have a personal computer, you can register as an instructor on the website.
It’s amazing to me that the Virginia Board for Professional Licensure and Registrars has not yet fully decided on the regulations for Continuing Legal Education. I know this because I spent a solid month studying the regulations. I’m confident that it is a good idea, and it’s great to see that the board is already looking at this issue.
The VRE is now part of the state of Virginia. This means that the state will be funding the continuing legal education program for the VRE. This is a good thing because it means that the education is going to be free to the public (at least, free to those who are willing to pay for it).
The problem is this will mean that schools around the state will have to pay for it. This means that the VRE will have to hire a third party to go around and find all the schools, and get the money to pay for it. This is bad because the VRE will still have to pay for the materials, and the books themselves will still be the responsibility of the schools. This is probably best avoided by the schools and the VRE working together to set up a plan.
The best solution would be to have the schools each pay for their own legal education and then the VRE split the bill. When one school ends up being too expensive for the VRE to hire a third party for, the VRE should pay the schools directly, but only the cost to hire the VRE for legal education would be paid for by the schools.
The VRE is not the only one interested in the legal education of students. The schools want to be sure that students understand that they’re required to attend the VRE’s training, which includes legal education for lawyers, to pass the exams to be allowed to sit for the bar exam. Currently, the VRE is the only one required to pay for this legal education, which is also why the schools are now required to pay for their own legal education.
The schools are the ones who are funding the VRE, but the colleges are the ones who are paying for it, and the universities want to ensure that the students understand the importance of legal education and their responsibility to pay for it.
