- Credit hours required: 33 credits, including 5 ethics, professionalism, elimination of bias, mental illness, or substance abuse prevention (1 of which must be professionalism) and 3 technology
- Specialty credits required: 5 hours in the areas of approved legal ethics, professionalism, bias elimination, substance abuse, or mental illness awareness programs, per reporting period, with at least 1 of the 5 hours in an approved professionalism program; and 3 credits in approved technology programs
- Length of reporting period: 3 years
- Compliance date: Assigned by Florida
- Reporting date: Assigned by Florida
- Compliance group: Varies. Each attorney is assigned a three-year reporting cycle.
- Minutes per credit hour: 50 minutes. To calculate credit for a specific program, divide the total length of the program in minutes by 50 and round to the nearest 1/2 hour.
- Distance Learning Requirements: May take all credits with live webcast or previously recorded.
- Attendance Reporting Procedure: The ABA does not report your participation. If the program has been approved, Florida attorneys must report their completion with the Florida approval code provided on your ABA Certificate of Completion in the MCLE portal.
On April 5, 2022, the Board of Governors voted to modify its CLE Diversity and Inclusion policy. While affirming the ABA’s strong commitment to diversity and inclusion and specifying that the ABA’s CLE programs and those the ABA co-sponsors continue to advance the aspirations of Goal III of the ABA’s Mission and Goals – to eliminate bias and enhance diversity – the policy removed the numerical component from the previous version, and is aspirational, as it does not prohibit providing credit for programs which do not meet the policy.
The Florida Bar has confirmed that the updated policy complies with the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling and credit will again be available for ABA programs for attorneys licensed in Florida. The updated ABA Diversity and Inclusion CLE policy is available online. (linked here)
Attorneys who attended or spoke at an ABA program held prior to January 1, 2022 may self-apply to get the credits earned applied to their Florida account.
If an attendee is seeking only CLER credit (not certification credit), the attorney may email their ABA Certificate of Completion to [email protected]. If an attendee is seeking certification credit or is a speaker seeking lecture credit, forms to self-apply are found online (linked here).
Credit continues to be unavailable for live courses held and on-demand courses that were completed between January 1, 2022 and April 4, 2022 (inclusive), unless the course was approved prior to April 15, 2021.
About the ABA's CLE
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