Due to ongoing concerns associated with the COVID-19 virus, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia has granted a request from the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education Commission for a temporary waiver of current CLE rules and regulations which limit the CLE credits for online and in-house credits to 12 credits, or half of the mandatory continuing legal education requirements. Attorneys will now be able to earn all or any portion of the required 24 CLE credit minimum through video, audio, correspondence, telephone seminars, computer-based training courses and in-house instruction, so long as the courses otherwise satisfy the requirements of the CLE rules and are approved for CLE credit in West Virginia. This temporary waiver is limited to the 2020-2022 reporting period ending June 30, 2022. System upgrades will have to be completed before CLE transcripts will reflect the waiver of the online/in-house limitation. Watch for future Bar Blast announcements when system upgrades are complete.
Most CLE providers are continuing to convert their live seminars to webinar format due to the coronavirus. Please note that live, interactive webinars (simultaneous electronic synchronous broadcasts) can now be approved as live attendance CLE credit if the courses meet the interactivity requirements of the current CLE rules. Both the temporary waiver of the limitation on online and in-house credits, as well as the live, interactive webinar rule should aid attorneys in meeting their CLE requirements for the current reporting period. Please see the attached link for the full Order of the Court
