ALI-ABA and ACLEA Team Up To Host High-Level Summit on Lawyer Education and Development in the 21st Century

ALI-ABA Continuing Professional Education (ALI-ABA) and the Association for Continuing Legal Education (ACLEA) are hosting a high-level summit on lawyer education and professional development in the 21st century, to be held October 15-17, 2009, at the Fairmont Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Arizona.  

The invitational conference, titled Equipping Our Lawyers: Law School Education, Continuing Legal Education, and Legal Practice in the 21st Century, will call together selected continuing legal education (CLE) professionals, practitioners, bar leaders, judges, law school professors and representatives, mandatory CLE administrators, law firm educators, and other experts on lawyer professional education and development.  Over the course of two-and-a-half days, these 150 thought leaders will debate and discuss critical issues facing law schools, continuing legal education providers, and the legal profession in equipping today's lawyers for practice, and will develop specific goals and recommendations for improvement and change. This will be a milestone summit, with an impact on legal training and the profession for years to come.

The summit will open on October 15 with two panels of experts discussing “The Future of the Legal Profession” and “The Role of Technology in Legal Training and Practice.” These panels will also be webcast live from the summit.  The core of the conference will be six participatory breakout sessions, featuring in-depth discussions of trends, best practices, and goals for law school education, bar admissions, CLE, mandatory CLE, in-house professional development, and generational issues. Recommendations emerging from these sessions will be debated by the conferees as a whole, who will craft consensus recommendations for modernizing and improving lawyer education and professional development to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

A detailed agenda for the summit can be found at www.equippingourlawyers.org.

Media who wish to cover the full conference live on-site or the two plenary sessions on October 15 via live webcast can download a Media Credential package online at www.equippingourlawyers.org.  

The summit’s planning committee includes honorary co-chairs JoAnne A. Epps, Dean, Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, and Thomas Z. Hayward, Jr., Of Counsel, K&L Gates LLP; executive chair Patrick A. Nester, Director, TexasBarCLE; and reporter and secretary Charles C. Bingaman, Charles C. Bingaman Consulting.

The summit would not be possible without the generous support of its sponsors. Platinum sponsors include the ABA Standing Committee on Continuing Legal Education/ABA-CLE, American Law Institute, Association for Continuing Legal Education, LexisNexis, and West LegalEdcenter. Gold sponsors include Continuing Education of the Bar – California, Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc., NALP-The Association for Legal Career Professionals™, National Business Institute, Inc., Pennsylvania Bar Institute, Practising Law Institute, and State Bar of Texas. For a complete list of sponsors, go to www.equippingourlawyers.org.  

About ALI-ABA

Located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and founded more than 60 years ago as a joint undertaking of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, ALI-ABA provides post-admission education for the legal profession. ALI-ABA is dedicated to keeping the legal community abreast of current developments and providing practitioners with the resources necessary to enhance their practice. ALI-ABA offers a national curriculum of continuing legal education featuring traditional substantive CLE courses, litigation and transactional skills programs, distance learning courses, published books and periodicals, online materials, customized solutions for institutions, and in-house services for lawyers at every stage of their careers. Visit the ALI-ABA website at www.ali-aba.org.

About ACLEA

ACLEA, the Association for Continuing Legal Education, is a dynamic organization devoted to improving the performance of CLE professionals. Established in 1964, ACLEA is an international association. Members are primarily from the United States and Canada, but also hail from Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Mexico. Administrators, trainers, managers, educators, publishers, programmers and meeting professionals are all members of ACLEA. This diversity in background and outlook makes ACLEA the best source for information on CLE today. Visit the ACLEA website at www.aclea.org.