Whew!

14 December 2006 by The General Published in: General musings 7 comments

After two VERY long (seemingly endless, in fact) days, I now have completed 25.5 hours of continuing legal education, meaning that, not only have I met the requirement of 24 hours every two years, I get to carry 1.5 hours forward toward the 2008 reporting period.

Every reporting period, we’re required to waste half an hour of our lives on substance abuse and how to recognize impaired lawyers. If you’ve heard this worthless, waste of time program once, you’ve heard it as many times as you ever need to hear it. There is absolutely no reason why this has to be repeated every other year. I’ve now heard it 9 times during the course of my career and it’s just as awful today as it was the first time. That’s half an hour of my life just wasted every two years that I can never get back, and it pisses me off every time that I think about it.

Having already fulfilled my substance abuse obligation for this reporting period, I decided that I could not even conceive of forcing myself to suffer through that last half hour today and left, or I would have 2.0 hours to carry forward and not just 1.5. That’s a trade-off I was definitely willing to make.

I wish I could find words to describe the overwhelming sense of relief I’m feeling, but they fail me at the moment.

Whew! will have to do for now.

Scridb filter

Comments

J David Petruzzi

Thu 14th Dec 2006 at 11:41 pm
Eric,

LOL.

That’s all I can say 🙂

J.D.
James Epperson

Fri 15th Dec 2006 at 9:07 am
What you need to do is go abuse a substance tonight to
celebrate getting your requirement done. I reccomend
bourbon…

JFE
The General

Fri 15th Dec 2006 at 10:55 am
Jim,

Sounds like a plan to me. 🙂

Eric
Jim Epperson

Fri 15th Dec 2006 at 11:21 am
You’re not the only one to have to put up with such BS, although
12 hours/yr is a bit much. Michigan has strong sexual harassment
laws, and every year we have to have a “sexual harassment”
meeting, in which the executive editor reads to us the Society’s
policy and the relevant sections of the state statute. This was
really a hoot when the previous executive editor was in office,
because she was a very proper, upper-crust British woman. To
listen to her go on about sexual harassment was priceless!

JFE
Mike Nugent

Fri 15th Dec 2006 at 12:22 pm
Yep, been there, done that. We’ve got a certain amount of mandatory in service training we’ve got to do annually. While sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get the time and resources to conduct realistic, worthwhile firearms or defensive tactics training, you can bet that we get our fill of “sexual harassment training”, “cultural diversity training”, “homeless awareness training” etc. etc. Sometimes I swear the tree-huggers have completely taken over.
Jim McGhee

Fri 15th Dec 2006 at 8:36 pm
Eric: I suffered through that nonsense for nearly thirty years. You can appreciate how I felt when I retired from the law some four years ago. No more CLEs unless I resume practice! Fat chance of that happening (I hope and pray).
John Stephenson

Sat 16th Dec 2006 at 12:07 am
Iâ€™ve refereed and umpired football, basketball, and baseball for the last forty-seven years. I work or have worked ever level from Division 1 College to â€œson, you need a lot of practice before you are little league substitute material.â€ At the start of every season still have to attend the â€œRules and mechanicsâ€ meeting. Except for the DH and infield fly rule, there hasnâ€™t been a nickelâ€™s worth of change in all those years. But the arguments almost follow a script.

But you should hear the discussion. Jesuits arguing angels and pins, and the Nine Old Men trying too define pornography are just amateurs compared to us.