Legal News

Prosecutor Suspended for Spurning CLE Requirements

By Dan Slater

Does neglecting ones continuing legal education requirements affect one’s lawyering ability? Or is the requirement of CLE credit a mere empty formality of practice?

Those are questions we asked while reading about the plight of Gemma Graham, a prosecutor from Minnesota, the Law Blog’s home state. Two weeks ago, Graham, a lawyer in the Hennepin County Attorneys office, received a $900 fine and two-years probation for engaging in the unauthorized practice of law for 20 years. (Yes, 20 years.) Click here for a story from the Minneapolis Star & Tribune, the Law Blog’s go-to childhood newspaper, and here for a report from the ABA Journal, a publication that, we regret to say, we largely ignored as a child.

Reportedly, Graham, who’s worked in the office since 1982, was orginally placed on restricted status in 1986 for failure to comply with rules regarding CLE credits. Attorneys on restricted status may not practice law, but Graham reportedly continued to practice up until May of last year when another inquiry into her CLE credits led to a 21-day suspension. In June, she submitted evidence to the CLE board that she’d taken sufficient course work to be removed from restricted status. Since the board only required proof from the previous two years, Graham was reinstated on June 27. But then a new statewide courts computer system flagged Graham as delinquent in her CLE credits during prior periods (previously it was up to individual lawyers to monitor their own credit).

Deputy county attorney Pat Diamond said Graham’s status didn’t jeopardize the cases she prosecuted and that her lapse in CLE credit amounted to a “technical defect.”

But in a follow-up piece yesterday in the StarTrib, some local legal commentators suggest that Graham’s punishment was too light, that cases she worked on while violating the CLE rules should be reviewed for errors and that Graham’s situation should be considered for possible criminal charges.

OK, LB’ers, we realize that CLE classes can serve purposes outside education, such as networking and free food, but how much do they actually educate? Is Graham’s failure to keep up with CLE a mere technicality or something more serious?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 19, 2008 (boomark / email).