Professionalism panel seeks CLE credits for mentoring
Professionalism panel seeks CLE credits for mentoring
Participants in a mentoring program, both those giving and receiving advice, should be eligible for CLE credits, according to the Bar’s Standing Committee on Professionalism.
The committee made that recommendation at its recent meeting where it also adopted a motto to support its mission statement and worked on plans for an October Stakeholders’ Workshop with law school deans, the Florida Board of Bar Examiners, and Supreme Court justices on the best way to imbue professionalism in law school students.
The committee works with the Bar’s Henry C. Latimer Center for Professionalism to promote professionalism and carry out policies set by the Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism and Civility.
The vote on mentoring CLE credit came at the end of a discussion about the committee’s mentoring activities. Those include collecting mentoring resources and compiling them into a “toolbox” that can be posted on the Bar’s website and distributed to voluntary bars that run mentoring programs.
The conversation included ways to get more lawyers both to act as mentors and become mentees. U.S. Middle District Judge Patricia Barksdale made the motion to ask the Board of Legal Specialization and Education to provide CLE credit for participation in formal bar mentoring programs, whether it’s as a mentor or the protege.
It passed unanimously.
Tim Chinaris, immediate past chair of the committee, reported on the Stakeholders’ Workshop.
“Our goal is to have it at the [Bar’s] Fall Meeting and to have a workshop where the bar examiners, the Supreme Court, and people from law schools — people on the front lines who deal with students — can help students who are going through the process know what is expected of them as lawyers and to be better prepared to go through the admissions process,” Chinaris said. “We also want to help share information about how law schools deal with the admissions process.”
He continued: “We want to come up with some best practices so students are given consistent advice on how they should be getting prepared for becoming a professional and for going through the admissions process. And we hope the people who work on the front lines will share useful information with their peers.”
The workshop is tentatively scheduled for Friday afternoon of the Fall Meeting.
As for the committee’s new motto, members said they wanted something compact yet descriptive.
Committee Vice Chair Whitney Untiedt, who headed the Public Relations and Marketing Workgroup that came up with the verbiage, said, “We wanted to create a powerful, succinct, short statement that describes what this committee is in service to the Bar and in service to the profession.”
The result: “Advancing professionalism and civility in the practice of law.”
The committee approved unanimously.
