Obtaining CLE for an event can require a significant amount of time and effort. Events certified for CLE credit are viewed as educational courses for attorneys and they must comply with New York State statutes (22 NYCRR 1500) and regulations. These rules are much more exacting than the looser regulatory and accreditation structures governing NYU Law academic program offerings. You may be advised to alter portions of your event’s content or materials to be eligible for CLE credit.
Before you begin, please consider these factors:
Timing
Please submit your application for CLE credit approximately four to six weeks in advance of your event. If fewer than four weeks remain before your event or if you would like to offer CLE credit for an event that is imminent, please email law.cle@nyu.edu to inquire about processing your CLE application more quickly. As mentioned above, it can take a significant amount of time and effort on the part of the event organizer to create a complete CLE application that meets the requirements of the New York State CLE Board.
Categories of Credit
The primary purpose of your event should be to increase the professional legal competency of attorneys in one of the NYS CLE categories of credit:
- Ethics and Professionalism;
- Skills;
- Law Practice Management;
- Areas of Professional Practice;
- Diversity, Inclusion, and Elimination of Bias
- Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Data Protection
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General Advice on Categories of Credit
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The CLE categories of credit can be read to sound very broad, but the CLE Board tends to take a narrower view. For instance, a program offered in the Diversity, Inclusion, and Elimination of Bias category could be about the court system, as it affects lawyers, the lawyer/client relationship, etc. rather than social justice writ large, e.g., they would not consider a session on microaggressions appropriate for Diversity, Inclusion, and Elimination of Bias or even CLE credit in Areas of Professional Practice, but would consider it appropriate for both categories if the session focused on microaggressions by judges/court personnel/opposing counsel and how to handle those as an attorney.
Further guidance from the CLE Board is available for the categories of Diversity, Inclusion, and Elimination of Bias and Cybersecurity, Privacy and Data Protection.
Level of Difficulty
The content of your event must be classified as appropriate for:
- Transitional attorneys (those who have practiced for fewer than two years);
- Non-transitional (experienced) attorneys;
- Both transitional and non-transitional attorneys.
The whole course is deemed to be one, the other, or both.
A transitional course is “designed to help newly admitted attorneys develop a foundation in the practical skills, techniques, and procedures that are essential to the practice of law.”
Format
NYU Law is accredited to issue NYS CLE credit for the following formats and methods of presentation:
- Traditional live classroom, for group participation;
- Live simultaneous transmission, for group participation and self-study (example: Zoom webinar);
- Prerecorded audio, for self-study (example: online podcast);
- Prerecorded video, for group participation and self-study (example: online video).
Budget
It is important to consider your budget for an event when deciding whether or not to request CLE.
Staffing
In-person events require staffing to distribute written materials and monitor sign-in/out sheets for attendance verification. Evening events may require staff overtime.
Copyright Clearance
New York State does not charge a fee for NYU Law to either certify a course for CLE credit or to award CLE to an individual; however, you must provide attendees with written materials tailored to the content of your event. Keep in mind that you should not distribute or post publicly post copywritten materials online without explicit permission to do so. There can be significant costs to obtain copyright clearance of written materials. It may be possible to obtain permission to reprint a source without charge directly from an author, but this can take time to arrange.
The Graduate Tax Office does not provide copyright clearance, consult on copyright clearance, check your clearances, or pay for clearances. The Graduate Tax Office is not responsible, financially or otherwise, for any copyright infringement you engage in, and we strongly encourage you to follow all applicable laws.
Additional information on copyright clearance is available in the Submit Your Request section on Written Materials.
Promotion
CLE credit cannot be promised in an advertisement/event listing (including the NYU Law Events Calendar) until credit has been approved by the School of Law CLE Administrator. In the Submit Your Request section of this website, we provide you with text to include in your promotional materials while your CLE application is pending approval. In the Before Your Approved Event section of this website, we provide you with text to include in your promotional materials after your event has been approved to offer CLE credit.