I and my ethics training company just got cancelled by the Continuing Legal Education organization that was my very first client when we started ProEthics over 20 years ago. Our seminars have always received top evaluations from lawyer attendees; nos small achievement in the legal ethics field. They also have made our long-time partners a lot of money. We had never needed to re-negotiate our arrangement, and my state tour with a new legal ethics program was a yearly occurrence every fall. This year, however, we had heard nothing about future dates or requests for possible program ideas (I have introduced most of my musical legal ethics seminars with Mike Messer with this group), and it was getting a little late. Grace sent an inquiry to the long-time contact who has handled our programs, and got back a stunning, “We have decided not to use you this year” letter. One shocking realization was that it was clear from the letter that the decision had been made long ago. After two decades, the organization did not have the courtesy to let us know about their decision, or to discuss their concerns with me before making it.
Even more shocking was the reason given for our dismissal. Last year, as I faced very small in-person groups with most of the attendees watching via Zoom, I made a point of thanking and congratulating those who made the effort to come in person, and urging those who had not to remember that remote training is not as effective as in-person training, and that ethics in particular was a topic in which interaction and engagement were crucial, features that are difficult to impossible using Zoom. This, we were told in the letter, did “not respect those who work diligently within our own Distance Education Department to provide remote options for attorneys.”
I did not denigrate the staff at all; I didn’t even know the organization had a Distance Education Department. What my comments did do, and appropriately so, was to alert lawyers to something they need to know. CLE isn’t just for getting mandatory credits. It is supposed to make lawyers better. Most data indicates that remote training with Zoom or similar methods don’t do the job: they are convenient, and lawyers like them because they can rack up billable hours and write emails while turning off their video and pretending to pay attention. But just as with children whose learning crashed with the substitution of distance learning for live instruction, lawyers are cheating themselves, their clients and the profession by undergoing CLE Lite when they should be challenged in a classroom.
It is the CLE organizations who should want to convey this message most: their mission, supposedly, is to keep lawyers competent, effective and ethical. I know it’s a business, and if their market wants remote seminars, they can’t be blamed too much for having them available. They are still inferior products, and if lawyers want to sacrifice ethics skills and knowledge for convenience, that’s a choice, and it’s also a choice if the profession wants to tolerate it. It doesn’t have to. CLE organizations could give fewer credits for remote courses, for example. They should. Most of the remote attendees sit back and don’t ask questions, don’t contribute, and generally “foxhole” as we used to call it in college. They can’t foxhole in my classes when I can look in their eyes.
In short, I told the truth. “Distance learning” is one more bad habit inflicted by the lockdown, but in ethics continuing legal education, it has more than just unseemly consequences, like more people dressing like slobs, or inconvenient ones, like businesses continuing to under-staff because it’s cheaper and customers get used to lousy service. Inadequate ethics training leads to unethical legal practice and untrustworthy lawyers. I’m sure the Distance Education Department are all hard working and trying to do the best job they can, but their product is necessarily inferior—adequate, maybe, but inferior. A CLE organization ought to be as concerned with encouraging lawyers to seek the best training possible as it is with keeping up the morale of the staff responsible for providing less than that, because there is money to be made.
Well, as my Daddy used to say, quoting William Jay’s famous epitaph, “He was right, dead right, as he sped along, but he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.” It is looking more and more likely that this will be the final word on my Sisyfean saga as well.
Ethics Alarms 
As a veteran trainer and training administrator, I heartily agree with your observations concerning the quality of in-person training events vs. distance learning events. Even before the Plandemic and the rise of Zoom (et al platforms) meetings, the trend toward online classes and video-based learning was well underway in my field. In my considered opinion, there is really no comparison between a well-taught in-person seminar and even the best distance learning classes I have experienced. You aptly pointed out all the reasons why.
Few people who haven’t done it have any appreciation for the work that goes into developing instructional materials and preparing and presenting an effective, top notch instructional program. Regarding some learners’ attitudes towards training, I am often reminded of Mark Twain’s comment that “education is one of the few things a man is willing to pay for and not get.”
As a person whonis required to do certain annual trainings for her job, all of which are online, I admit to turning on the video and going to do something else. Even the trainings I sign up for voluntarily, because I am interested in the topic, don’t get my full attention because I do not resist the temptation to multitask while it plays in the background.
Right. Almost nobody does. It’s human nature, which is why the discipline imposed by being in a classroom is important. It’s the same principle that makes home exercise equipment worthless, in most cases. Go to the gym, and you work out. At home, there are too many distractions.
Sounds like the Distance Education Department needs an Ethics course on how to deal with disagreements between it and those who teach for CLE. All courses and students aren’t cut from the same cloth – and in this case the course and the students would be improved by in-person participation.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but you immediately sorted the class into two groups and implied that one of the groups wasn’t as worthy of thanking as the other. That is unprofessional and a very sour note to begin a training on, regardless of how true you think it is. If my group ran trainings that had both in-person and virtual options, I wouldn’t want someone like that leading a training either.
Let this be a learning experience for you: if you denigrate the service you are offering as you are offering it, people will be less likely to pay you for that service. Even if you think you have been given inadequate tools to perform that service equally for all patrons, it is still your responsibility to do your best with the tools you are given.
You seem to understand this when it comes to people providing a service to you, but when you are the one providing the service, you think it’s your job to throw veiled criticism at both your customers and your employers. If you wouldn’t accept this from a tech help or a CVS cashier, I’m not sure why you think others should accept it from you.
Also, if you had a problem with virtual students, you shouldn’t have agreed to teach the seminar.
Yeah, good one, Tommy. I agreed to teach Zoom seminars when those were the only alternative; I agreed to teach a live seminar, in which remote participants were allowed. The latter are still benefiting from me more than having no instruction at all…or, though I say it myself, another instructor. I’m a professional stage director: anyone who watches a production of mine on video is seeing a different and inferior show. I’ll happily tell them so, but if they want just the video, it’s their choice. I’m not going to refuse to do a superior product because some people accept a lesser version of it.
Are you truly that obtuse?
Oh, Balderdash. I was doing as I described: telling the virtual participants that they were neither getting what they needed to out of the session, nor showing the dedication to learning legal ethics that trustworthy lawyers are obligated to have. If the truth hurts, tough. They need to know, and I’m obligated ethically to tell them.
It wasn’t veiled criticism, it was quite direct and appropriate.I didn’t denigrate the service: the remote participants were choosing the lesser of two products available to them—if they didn’t understand that, it was the duty of the organization to enlighten them. If they did understand that, it was the duty of the organization to explain what their choice meant. Very few attendees complained about my statement; the evaluations, as usual, were uniformly excellent.
What a deliberately obnoxious comment. I didn’t “sort” anything: one set of attendees were right in front of me and engaging and actively involved, the other set were out in cyberspace, invisible and unaccountable. They sorted themselves. Anyone who was under the delusion that it made no difference whether they were present of just passively watching was disabused of that notion—as they should have been.
We live in a nation of entitled brats who take offense at not being congratulated for showing up, and when they don’t get congratulated for showing up when they don’t show up because they are remote and watching Netflix, they whine they cancel you with less courtesy than a lesson from Tommy Terway.
The “they whine” should not be in that sentence. Or, maybe… They whine in their minds and cancel you silently with less courtesy than…
Here in the southern summer, air conditioners don’t fix themselves via zoom. Heat and humidity can be a great tutor for humility with a drought of service techs. And customers can complain all they want because they can’t take the heat of reality.
When I went back to preparing taxes nearly a decade ago, my sister and I sat in a classroom with an actual instructor. I don’t know that he was the best there was, but he was there and did a credible job of covering the material.
To my mind, one of the biggest benefits of that course was that you prepared tax returns using paper and pencil. Now, in the real world these days you use computer programs to do all that, which is good. However, having been through the process of actually writing a tax return is something that cannot be simulated on a computer. You learn how the return fits together, where each line goes when it is transferred to another form, and how the different forms, deductions, and credits interact with each other.
Nowadays, these classes are all done on phones and laptops and virtual classes. I think something is irreparably lost teaching basic income taxes that way. Yes, the computer will do all the math and print all the forms — but we don’t earn our money just for data input. We’re supposed to know how to apply the tax laws, what questions to ask, when to know when something isn’t right, etc. etc. That is a big reason people are willing to pay hundreds to get their taxes done (there are many reasons but this is a big one).
Virtual only — even for motivated students — is just not the same as in person.
I highly doubt your dismissal was due to the comments you made about in-person v. remote attendance, or that the Distance Education Department truly felt insulted or denigrated. Rather, I think this was merely an excuse and that the real reason was/is your political views and commentary on your blog. You, my friend, got canceled. The left tolerates no, and seek complete subjugation of all dissent.
Unfortunately, most of us practicing lawyers see CLE has just another annoying burden placed on us for the privilege of practicing the profession, just like mandatory pro bono work, which thankfully, I as a full-time government employee, am exempt from. Mandatory pro bono isn’t a very good idea anyway, it just means those higher up the letterhead stick the youngest associate with all the pro bono work and then yell at him if his billable hours suffer. I know because for a while I was that associate, and, upon receiving my fifth pro bono assignment in a year I dared to ask if someone else could take a turn this time out. I was of course told that if I didn’t like it, I knew where the door was and they’d replace me tomorrow. It felt very good to later tell my former employer to go to hell when he needed an extension.
New Jersey was actually the last state to require mandatory CLE, and I don’t think we were the worse off without it. But I guess the powers that be at the various bar associations got tired of people from other states giving them crap about it and implying that we were somehow less because we didn’t have it.
The rule used to be 24 credits every 2 years only half of which could be taken virtually. They lifted the live requirement when COVID hit, and I don’t think they put it back in place. Virtual instruction meant they could cram many more people in and were not limited by space. It also means you can choose your course when you want to see it, and are not bound to someone else’s schedule. Yes, it also means you can continue working while the video plays and you just tap the button to verify that you’re still there every few minutes. My office actually subscribed to one of these providers and told us that was exclusively where we could get our CLE if we didn’t want to have to pay for it out of our own pockets. Given that our office has recently shrunk considerably, as people have left and not been replaced, we really can’t afford to have the few remaining attorneys lose any more time than they absolutely have to. Most of us really don’t like the idea of giving up evenings and weekends for this, because our families give us grief about it. Virtual learning significantly alleviates these problems. You get a lot less grief if you watch a video here and a video there after everybody else has gone to bed then if you miss yet another PTA meeting or your son’s game or your daughter’s dance recital because you were tied to a particular evening for CLE. You get a lot less grief if you take an afternoon on the weekend and watch CLE instead of football than you do if you have to get up like it’s a work day and dash to New Brunswick an hour away and an hour back and not get back until a lot of businesses have closed since they close early on Saturday. Do you really want endless disapproving glances from your wife about the lawn that has gone a little bit too long without being mowed or the fact that you couldn’t keep your promise to bring your father-in-law’s car in for an oil change? And do you really want all of these stories repeated to everybody at Thanksgiving and your sisters-in-law all giving you the righteous finger of judgment and saying what a failure you are as a husband and father?
Sorry, Jack, but this is one time where I think your tendency to say what you think, right or wrong, got you in trouble.
Steve,
Everything you said makes sense. However, if an ethicist believes the ethical thing to do is to tell people that the virtual class is not as beneficial as the in-person class then we cannot blame the ethicist for stating what he believes.
From my vantage point, telling people that showing up in person would provide them a better product promotes the value of the CLE course. Otherwise, why can’t the professionals just read a book on the subject and say they learned the material. From what I gather from the post and some responses it appears that many find the demands on their time too onerous and want either to do away with professional requirements or minimize them to such a point that their interference in the daily grind is more manageable. This is no different than students wanting to have fewer writing assignments or more open book tests.
What I expect is happening is that the firm that produces the menu of offerings wants to exploit the weaknesses in human nature and has little concern for actual outcomes. Their goal is to put people in seats and collect their fees. Whether or not the lawyer, in this case, develops professionally is irrelevant to their hosts bottom line. Most lawyers will behave to a minimum standard of professionalism that will not affect the CLE firm’s reputation anyway, and trying to find the CLE firm proximally responsible for a lawyer’s transgression approaches an impossibility. So, what do they care if the better product is sacrificed. The CLE requirement remains in place, they have a virtual offering can be offered to virtually an unlimited audience, and the profits rise. What is to explain.
Spot on, Chris, except that making money off of lawyers is not what CLE is supposed to be about. I used to belong to ACLEA, the association of CLE providers, and did a program for them about the ethics of CLE. It made them uncomfortable: I said that without data showing the CLE attendees actually learned anything—you know, like tests and grades—the whole enterprise seemed like a money-making scam. Mandatory training, mandatory fees, no evidence of actual value. And that makes the CLE business unethical: they have no interest in knowing whether the seminars have any effect at all, and don’t want to find out.
Well, that’s not my business. My true clients are lawyers, and my duty is to help them be more ethical. If that requires me telling them that distance learning is crap, I still am obligated to do it. If a CLE organization is unhappy about me exposing a scam, so be it.
I think you have something there. In NJ we were required to take two sets of CLE upon being admitted. The first we had to actually turn in and be marked on, the second, nothing. I don’t think testing and grading for life with CLE would go over well with the profession. I can think of no other profession that does that, and I do not think the legal profession is the one profession that should be singled out for de facto homework for life. The whole point of completing school is to be able to work and then not take work home with you.
I wholeheartedly agree. I spent a ton of money on economic development courses through CUED which later became the AEDC. None of these were required for my job but at the end of a given number of courses I was eligible to sit for an exam that would certify me as a economic development professional. I never sat for the exam but I learned a great deal by being there and also having the opportunity to discuss these and other topics with like minded professionals. The people who sat for the exam typically were on a career path to be a city or county economic development director. My focus was supporting small businesses which will never lead to such a position.
“Their goal is to put people in seats and collect their fees.”
Bingo. And when they collect whether virtual or live, they don’t care.
Steve
This is happening across all educational venues. Distance learning conceptually makes sense when distance is the issue. It does not make sense when the distance is easily covered in a reasonable amount of time. Regional offerings are not difficult to reach nor require expensive transportation. How many people would be willing to pay MIT or Harvard tuition if their degree was entirely virtual. Much learning takes place when outside the classroom when attendees are talking amongst themselves. No computer or distance ed class can replace the experience of human interaction. Schools have become profit centers and not institutions where pursuit of knowledge is the goal. Pay the fees get your ticket punched and you are certified to play in that particular game.
Pay the fees get your ticket punched and you are certified to play in that particular game.
Hence pay-to-play.
I do sometimes wonder if the tone of EA posts is a bit unnecessarily harsh. Even though I don’t have any notable objection to what is written, I wonder if having EA associated with Pro Ethics results in cancellation vulnerability due to the hard writing style that most people will feel begs a fight.
Would it be a reasonable description that EA is written with the binary mindset: either give an unethical pass on an issue or write so hard that the target would feel being put through a coffee grinder?
I want it to beg a fight. This is where Turley drives me crazy sometimes being so equivocal and diplomatic that it’s obvious he is pulling punches.
He has been doing less of that lately though. Maybe he reads Ethics Alarms.
Actually there hasn’t been too much harsh fighting lately. Most of the dyed in the wool leftists have been banned or driven away, and the ones that have popped up lately haven’t lasted.
It’s tough fighting reason with emotionalism, platitudes, and talking points in a way that doesn’t run afoul of the guidelines for this forum.
Apparently, more of the partisans on the Left understand that that we might think. Or, alternatively, they just have no one to complain to about being triggered by a comment opposing theirs. Is there anything that the Left hates more than their trigger complaints to fall on deaf ears? Other than Donald Trump, I mean…