Skip to main content

ALI & ABA End CLE Partnership After 65 Years

By
Beginning in 1947, the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute partnered as ALI-ABA Continuing Professional Education to provide continuing legal education to American attorneys. The American Law Institute Council and the American Bar Association Board of Governors both voted to dissolve the longstanding partnership this spring. Both groups will continue to provide CLE programming, but as individual entities. The ALI-ABA.org website now announces its new name as ALI CLE, and ABA CLE programs can be found at http://www.americanbar.org/groups/cle.html.

The two entities making up this long-standing purveyor of continuing legal education are both much older than their recently-ended partnership. The American Bar Association was founded on August 21, 1878, by 100 lawyers from 21 states. The American Law Institute was established in 1922, after a study found that uncertainty and complexity were the two major problems of existing American law. The ALI was incorporated in 1923, formed by prominent lawyers, judges, and law professors with the mission of improving the law and its administration.

The two groups came together in 1946, when the ABA asked the ALI to collaborate in the formation of a continuing legal education program for practicing attorneys. At this time, young lawyers were returning home from service in World War II and needed refresher courses in the law. In addition, the regulations begun with the New Deal only expanded in the war years, giving an additional impetus for providing continued legal education for all attorneys, veterans or not. In 1947 the two organizations created a "Committee on Continuing Education of the Bar of the American Law Institute Collaborating with the American Bar Association" and began work with the help of  a $250,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation. By 1958, ALI-ABA was able to deliver CLE programs to 44 states, a venture that progressed with the advent of new technologies.

In the 65 years of the partnership, ALI-ABI has produced programs of study, published books and periodicals, and implemented satellite and internet methods of CLE delivery. Now with the partnership dissolved, ALI CLE has absorbed most of the intellectual content and technology of ALI-ABA, and the ABA will produce independent CLE materials and programming. With both entities poised to provide excellent continuing legal education services, American attorneys will have increased opportunity and resources for staying up to date and enhancing their professional development.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amazing, but True, Deportation Story of Carlos Marcello

By
Earlier this week, the University of Houston Law Center was fortunate to have as its guest Professor Daniel Kanstroom of Boston College of Law. An expert in immigration law, he is the Director of the International Human Rights Program, and he both founded and directs the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic. Speaking as the guest of the Houston Journal of International Law’s annual Fall Lecture Series, Professor Kanstroom discussed issues raised in his new book, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora . Professor Michael Olivas introduced Professor Kanstroom to the audience, and mentioned the fascinating tale of Carlos Marcello, which Professor Kanstroom wrote about in his chapter “The Long, Complex, and Futile Deportation Saga of Carlos Marcello,” in Immigration Stories , a collection of narratives about leading immigration law cases. My interest piqued, I read and was amazed by Kanstroom’s description of one of the most interesting figures in American le...
1 comment
Read more

This Day in Legal History -- Roy Cohn

By
Big lawyers have big personalities, and few had as big a personality as Roy Cohn who was born on this day in New York City in 1927. Cohn’s career was spent in the Washington DC—New York axis, famous in the press for his legal and social exploits, his list of famous and infamous clients, and as the poster-boy for every stereotype of the dishonest grasping lawyer. The legal career of Roy Cohn is an object lesson on the use, and abuse, of the lawyer’s power. Roy Cohn was born on February 20, 1927 in New York City. His father was a justice in the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court and was well connected politically. These connections, along with a precocious intelligence which allowed him to graduate from Columbia law school at age 20, paved the way for a bright legal career. Cohn’s first job (after waiting until he turned 21 to be admitted to the bar) was as an assistant U.S. Attorney in New York. He first came to prominence in his role as a prosecutor in the Rosenberg espi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

By Anonymous
“Man’s inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.” –Martin Luther King Jr.   Last week, I had the pleasure of attending  Professor Zachary D. Kaufman ’s presentation on  Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda  hosted by the  Johannesburg Holocaust & Geno cide Ce ntre . Among the many takeaways highlighted by Professor Kaufman and drawn from  Lessons from Rwanda: Post-Genocide Law and Policy   were ten simple yet profound lessons:   Lesson #1: Hate speech is dangerous.   To illustrate the role that hate speech played in the Rwandan genocide, Professor Kaufman discussed multiple forms of  propaganda , such as Kangura, Radio Rwanda, and RTLM “hate radio.”   He concludes that we must have limits, including with respect to social media, and further asserts that social media must do a better jo...
Post a Comment
Read more