News & Updates
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Flash Alert: 6/24/2020 4 p.m.
A suspicious website was just brought to our attention called “GoCLE”. This site is purporting to be an online provider of accredited CLE, but was actually directly copying content from Lawline and publishing it on their website without permission.
Immediately upon discovery of this site, Lawline submitted a copyright takedown request to GoDaddy, and copyrighted content has been removed as of today, but the site remains active.
We wanted to let you know about this site in case any attorneys attempted to take programs or obtain credit through “GoCLE. GoCLE has not submitted any accreditation requests to Tennessee and does not have any Tennessee approved courses.
Covid-19 News
The Supreme Court has not made a decision on carryforward hours for 2021. They are monitoring the status of Covid 19 and expect to make a decision in September or October.
On March 27, 2020, the Supreme Court entered an order allowing attorneys to use unlimited online hours to establish their compliance for the 2020 compliance year. Attorneys seeking reinstatement in 2020 are also covered by the order. Access the new order HERE. On March 13, 2020, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued an order allowing Unlimited Online Hours toward 2019 Compliance. The order is effective through March 31, 2020 for the 2019 compliance year. See the order here
Notice of Credit Card Payment Changes
The CLE Commission switched to a new credit card payment vendor in December 2019. The new system will allow international payment cards. You will see new payment screens. There will also be a transaction fee for payment made using the website. The site uses a pop up which opens a new window to complete your transaction. Please disable any pop up blocker.
The Commission has paid these fees for more than twelve years. Due to increasing costs and to bring the Commission in line with best practices at other state government agencies, a new policy for the use of credit cards to pay charges on an attorney, provider, or law firm account, will be implemented.
- Effective December 7, 2019 a 2.35% convenience fee will be assessed on all Visa, MasterCard, Discover Card and American Express credit card transactions.
No transaction fee will be assessed on payments made by check.
Please Note:
- The Commission does not keep any part of the convenience fee. The fee is charged and collected by a 3rd party processor contracted by the Commission to provide credit card processing services for accounts. The full amount of the payment less the processing fee is remitted to the Commission.
- These changes are in line with policies already in place at other government agencies in the state including the Board of Professional Responsibility and the Department of Revenue.
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On April 25, 2019 the Supreme Court approved major amendments to Rule 21 governing Continuing Legal Education to clarify and simply the rule. Click Here to read the new rule
December 31st is the Compliance Deadline
The compliance deadline will soon be here. Now is the time to report out-of-state and online courses that are usually not reported by providers. Remember that Rule 21, Section 8.03 requires attorneys to pay for out-of-state and online hours where the course provider does not pay the fee. Notices of pending unpaid attendance are sent by e-mail when you have insufficient funds to post a course. Included are instructions to how to keep and pay for hours as well as how to delete unwanted hours. Make sure your e-mail address is up to date. Check the Quick Links for more detail.
Exemptions are claimed on the Annual Report Statement which are sent at the end of February.
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ANNUAL COMPLIANCE SUMMARY
Rule 21 requires that the Commission publish an Annual Compliance Summary of the activities of the Commission and the CLE reports and requests for exemption received by the Commission during the preceding compliance year. The report contains MULTIPLE Tables. Click here to access the report.