Lawyers are required to take continuing legal education courses, typically 15 credits a year. Some states mandate ethics courses as well. Here’s a sampling of the topics from a recent stack of brochures that crossed my desk — they’ll give you an idea of the wide range of practice areas your fictional lawyers may be involved in, and maybe spark an idea or two:
Auto Injury Litigation – Start to Finish
Payroll Law Bootcamp
Medical Malpractice — Expert Witness Strategies
Hydraulic Fracturing Land Lease Negotiations
Medicare Requirements in Injury Settlements
Quiet Title Actions (just tell it to sit down and shut up, or you’ll send it to bed without any dinner!)
Prior Appropriation Water Rights (as Snoopy says, I don’t even understand the lunch menu)
Collection Law from Start to Finish
Estate Administration Procedures: Why Each Step is Important (lots of story fodder here)
Drafting School Handbooks and Policies
LLC or Inc.? Entity Selection for a Small to Medium Sized Business (Anybody else think of The Exorcist when you hear the word “entity”?)
Human Resource Law
The Art of Settlement
HIPPA Compliance for Lawyers: The New Requirements
Social Security Disability: Advanced Issues & Solutions
Farm Injury Litigation: A Plaintiff’s Guide — includes determining liability, finding insurance coverage, maximizing recovery from multiple wrongdoers, workers’ comp, and other sources, OSHA regs, defective machinery design, and proving damages
Several courses on land use issues, understanding surveys, title insurance, and boundary disputes
Litigating School Bullying & Cyberbullying Lawsuits
Law Practice Management
Construction Defects
Marijuana in the Workplace
Authenticating Social Media and Email Evidence
And a postcard for the annual On-Campus Interview Weekend at the Law School, for firms looking to hire.
I get these too – some are very creative. I guess I’m lucky – I have a conference each year that is specific as to my niche in the law – gives me almost all my CLE for the year – since I’m licensed in several states, it takes a bit of coordination to make sure I meet all the requirements, especially the state specific ones. I’ve recently seen CLE on bullying, elder law including Social Security issues, immigration law and a whole series that is aimed at evaluating truthfulness and other techniques along those lines. Good post.
Carolyn, that is lucky — and I understand the challenge of meeting requirements in multiple states! At least mine, Montana and Washington, now have the same requirements, but different reporting periods. Elder law — growing field. Bullying — fairly new, and I think not just limited to schools.
I wish my states (Colorado and Missouri) had an exemption for old people. I could save money that way.
Darn it! Some seminar providers give a discount to new lawyers — those admitted less than five years.
I could use a few of those and I am not even a lawyer. Farm injury litigation (or museum injury litigation, since the farm animals are museum displays). HIPPA, when they took effect they actually loosened our confidentially standards. Payroll Bootcamp sounds like fun.
“Museum injury litigation” — makes me think of Sheila Connolly and her Museum Mystery series!