Every licensed attorney must attend the required number of hours in continued legal education (CLE) for the reporting period (24 hours in 2 years in the state of New York).
Every attorney must also do that at his own expense. Attorneys are lucky if their law firms pay for their CLE seminars (some law firms do) and/or allow attorneys to attend those during business week.
Many, if not most attorneys, though, carry that expense on their own.
Lately, it has become more or less easy to "attend" a CLE seminar without physically being there - online. Paid subscriptions to such seminars are available to attorneys.
All federal judges and most state judges are also attorneys. Being an attorney and maintaining the licensing requirements (including the CLE requirements) is a pre-requisite for many judges. Yet, judges apparently, are not required to pay for their CLE courses. They either charge the public, or accept gifts of all-expenses-paid CLE seminars in resort areas from private sponsors.
In my view, both of those options create appearances of impropriety for judges and puts the judicial office into a disrepute.
There is a definite problem when the judiciary, while cutting court budgets and creating backlog of cases, splurge public funds allegedly on "continuing legal education" which happens at resorts in and even outside of the country.
It was recently reported that some criminal court judges in New Orleans have spent $75,000.00 over the recent years to take them to such "continued legal education" conferences and seminars.
The same source as reported this splurge reports that judges who were rated least efficient got the most travel at public expense.
Judges defended their behavior because, allegedly, the Louisiana Supreme Court has set the cap for such travel per judge at the whopping $15,000.00 (!). It is beyond me as to what is the need for such an expense for a judge, and why the public must pay $15,000.00 per year per judge for continued legal education (CLE), especially that apparenty such CLE took, reportedly, only 3.5 hours a day and can be easily delivered through an online seminar that the same judge can do from his home on the Internet, without spending a penny of public money.
There is a no less pronounced problem when judges attend such CLE conferences at the expense of private sponsors (see, for example, here, here and here) - and then preside over the sponsor's cases and rule for the sponsors. It is not a direct bribe, of course, but it surely resembles one, and such an appearance of impropriety should be enough to take a judge off the "sponsored" case.
The problem of sponsored travel for judges has existed and was reported for a long time, yet, obviously, nothing has changed.
It is illustrative that law schools opposed a legislative cap on travel expenses for federal judges.
It is no less illustrative that the proposal for the cap provided for an exception, that the cap will not be applicable if the trips were sponsored by governmental bodies, judicial associations and bar associations.
Apparently, if attorneys pay judges' expenses - and then appear before those judges - that is somehow ok?
Recently, a Louisiana judge was disciplined for accepting a direct gift of an all-expenses-paid trip from an attorney who had a case tried in front of the judge.
I see no difference when the all-expenses-paid trips are paid for by a group of attorneys, or a group of corporate sponsors whose cases are or likely to come before that judge.
It is disingenuous at best to claim that judges do not know sponsors of the seminar and do not feel obliged to rule in a certain way to get invited to such a seminar again.
The appearance of impropriety still taints any decisions that such a "sponsored" judge makes.
And that destroys what remains of the public trust in the integrity of the judiciary.
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