Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
ISSN
0022-2208
Publisher
Association of American Law Schools
Language
en-US
Abstract
In the ongoing discussions about continuing legal education (CLE), concerns have been raised about the quality of programming that is created and delivered. Critics have emphasized the weaknesses in mandatory programs, arguing that requiring annual training on topics such as legal ethics tends to fall short of stated goals.1 Too often, it is said, such programs fail to deliver content in an engaging manner that is likely to improve competence.2 The picture conjured up is of the bored lawyer, sitting in the back of a room flipping through a newspaper or some other distraction, as CLE instructors passively discuss minute developments of the law that may have little direct connection to the lawyer’s area of practice or interests.
In this essay, we take no position on whether CLE should be mandatory and instead focus our attention on how quality CLE programming can be created. The observations we offer derive from our experience as joint creators of an on-demand video CLE ethics program produced in conjunction with the Practising Law Institute (PLI), one of the nation’s largest and best-known providers of CLE content. The program, titled Motivated Reasoning and Legal Ethics, 4 is, we believe, a useful case study to highlight ways that CLE programming can provide valuable ethics training to lawyers. Created in 2019 and made available primarily to PLI subscribers, the video program emphasizes the importance of teaching lessons from behavioral science on how lawyers make ethical decisions. Drawing on decades of social science research, the focus is on what is known as “motivated reasoning”—a well-documented phenomenon that describes a compendium of subtle psychological and situational factors that can have a significant effect on human decisionmaking.5 The program emphasizes many features of adult learning that have been identified as important to effectiveness: It focuses on a novel topic in a creative and flexible format and uses high-quality interactive techniques to engage viewers, including performances by trained actors who simulate real-world ethical scenarios that raise behavioral science concepts for discussion and reflection.
We offer this case study not to claim that all CLE ethics programming should be produced in a similar way. Indeed, we recognize that in some respects this model is limited because of the resources such programs can take to produce. Nevertheless, we believe that there are useful lessons to be drawn from this case study, both about the importance of teaching lawyers about how behavioral science informs ethical decision-making and more broadly about ways to create CLE ethics programming that is creative, engaging, and, we believe, effective as a teaching tool.
This essay proceeds in three parts. In Part I, we describe the social science behind motivated reasoning and why it is an important topic for ethics training of lawyers.7 Part II describes the Motivating Reasoning and Legal Ethics program, emphasizing aspects of the program that we believe are most useful for consideration by CLE content creators. In Part III, we offer our reflections on lessons from this experience, including suggestions for improvements for such programming in the future.
Recommended Citation
Tigran W. Eldred & Molly J. Walker Wilson,
Innovative Approaches to On-Demand Continuing Legal Education Ethics Training: A Case Study
,
72
Journal of Legal Education
502
(2024).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4154
Included in
Legal Education Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, Legal Profession Commons
