CLE Deadline Season: Legal Professionals, Start Your Engines

By Catherine Peglow

Here we are two weeks before the North Carolina State Bar Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) grace period ends on Feb. 29, 2016. I have started to call it the “silly season.” NASCAR fans are familiar with that term. It’s when drivers, crew chiefs and car manufacturers change at the end of the season in a flurry of somewhat unsettling activity.  Similarly, the phone is ringing off the hook here in the CLE Department, and there is a definite air of desperation in the voices of most of the people calling in, some of whom need to get in all 12 hours of MCLE before the end of February.

We’ve got you covered. We are known for our strong section-sponsored live annual meeting programs and we have eight of those in February, including programs in Charlotte and Pinehurst. The live programs here at the Bar Center in Cary generally offer a live webcast option as well. We also now offer over 500 on-demand programs that you can view from your computer or mobile device. I just took my first audio/streaming program from my desk. It was convenient and easy.  We currently have over two dozen to choose from in our online catalog.

For the real daredevils among us, you can wait until the bitter end on Feb. 29 and join us for Marathon Monday. If that sounds like a hashtag, you might see it on Twitter that day. We will be offering all 12 hours of CLE credit from 7:30 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. in four locations across the state: Asheville, Charlotte, Raleigh and Wilmington. If the weather is bad that day, I am told there are interesting staff get-ups, as well as lots of pizza.  As we race toward the CLE finish line, here’s hoping for no weather-related delays and checkered flags for all.

Catherine Peglow is the Director of Continuing Legal Education at the North Carolina Bar Association