Frequently Asked Questions for Providers
No. Attendance submitted more than one year after the date of completion of the course will not be posted. See Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. § 8.02(a).
You MUST contact the Commission and have the attendee hours previously reported for the speaker deleted from their account. After the hours have been deleted, you can resubmit the proper credit for the speaker.
If you submit new attendance prior to deleting the first submission, it is seen as a duplicate posting and ignored. You will not be given a credit for the attendance that was removed, so you will need to pay the posting fee for the new submittal for the speaker.
A number of things can cause this:
- The batch is still pending; please check for any errors and submit.
- The Board of Professional Responsibility (BPR) number used to enter attendance for the attorney was not accurate, so the attorney didn’t get the credit.
- Payment for the attendance batch did not go through. Unpaid attendance will not post.
- The attendance will post within one hour of online payment, no matter when it was paid.
No, there is no automatic calculation for speaker credit. Marking someone as a speaker only allows you to give them more credit than the course was approved for. The provider must calculate the number of hours the speaker should receive based on the number of pages provided as handouts and enter those hours for the speaker. To appropriately credit a speaker, check the instructor box when submitting attendance AND enter the total number of hours the speaker should receive.
Speakers with five or more pages of handouts receive four times the number of hours they spoke. Speakers with four or fewer pages of handouts (including those with no handouts) receive two times the number of hours they spoke. If they present the same CLE at a later date, they receive half as much credit as they did for the original presentation. See Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 21 § 4.03(a).
Handouts include textual materials. Copies of PowerPoint presentation slides will be calculated as handout materials on a per-word basis. One page of materials is equivalent to 340 words.
For example, if a presenter speaks for 2 hours and has no handouts, they are eligible for four hours of CLE credit. If a presenter has five pages of handouts, they receive eight hours of CLE credit.
PLEASE NOTE: Courses should be accredited only for the actual number of hours the course runs.
Pull up the course. Click on the MAIN tab, and look in the notes section. The reason(s) for the denial will be listed in this section.
If attendance has never been submitted for the specific course number, a provider may modify a previously submitted course.
Providers are required to report attorney attendance within 30 days of completion of the course/program. Late-reported attendance is subject to a late fee.
The course reporting fee is $2.00 per credit hour per attorney. The fee increases by $1.00 per credit hour per attorney ($3.00 total) for courses reported more than 45 days after completion of the course. See Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 21 § 8.02(a).
No, you can highlight the course and click on the copy icon. Then make the appropriate changes for the copied course and submit it for approval.
Never modify and resubmit a previously-held course where attendance has been submitted. Doing so will remove credit previously reported and posted to the attendees’ accounts and could cause noncompliance issues for the attendees of the previous program, including fees and possible suspension of their law licenses.
All Ethics/Professionalism credit is designated as dual credit. See Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 21 § 3.01(b).
Dual credit is granted when the subject matter of the program is the Rules of Professional Conduct or ethical considerations applicable to attorneys.
Dual credit will also be granted to programs or topics:
a. designed to sustain or increase the capacity of attorneys to strive for and to achieve the highest, aspirational levels of professionalism, including programs aimed at increasing attorney well-being, optimism, resilience, relationship skills, and energy and engagement in their practices;
b. designed to help lawyers re-connect with, strengthen, and apply their values, strengths of character, and sense of purpose toward achieving outstanding professionalism;
c. designed to protect lawyers or help them recover from the deleterious effects on professionalism of stress, substance abuse, and poor staff, financial, or time management; or
d. designed to support the development of organizational cultures within firms, law departments, and legal agencies that recognize, support, and encourage outstanding professionalism.
All programs must be clearly and primarily designed and intended for attorneys, not a general audience. Programs and topics focused on advertising legal services will be denied all credit, except to the extent they deal with the ethical restrictions concerning advertising.
Finally, in order to qualify for credit, the topics must be presented in a session separate and apart
from the general credit topics, with specific time allocated to only such topics. See Reg. 5H.
PROVIDERS: If you are a provider/sponsor, please call us at 615-741-3096 or e-mail info@cletn.com to set up an account and to learn more about the application and accreditation process. See Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 21 § 5. More information may be found here.
ATTORNEYS: If you are an attorney, first search for the course on our website (“Course Search” under the “Attorneys” tab) to see if it’s already been approved. Any course taken within Tennessee must be accredited and reported by the provider. If your course is not yet accredited, please contact the provider and ask the provider to submit the course for accreditation, report your credits, and pay the reporting fee. Any course taken within Tennessee must be accredited and reported by the provider.
If you are an attorney who has taken a course out of state that has not been accredited by the provider, you may seek accreditation of the course by sending the following information to info@cletn.com:
• this form
• an Application for Accreditation
• course description
• biographies of the speakers
• an agenda from the event if it includes more than one session, and
• a Certificate of Completion signed by the provider verifying the hours completed.
If the course was attended online, please follow the instructions on this form. You must also pay the $2/hour reporting fee.
No. However, before you can receive CLE credit, the course/program must be approved and accredited by the Tennessee CLE Commission.
If the provider didn’t send the course to us for approval and accreditation, then the attendee must submit it. Submitting a course for accreditation does not guarantee approval and that it will qualify for CLE credit.
Payments are not applied to specific courses or batches. They are simply credits toward the balance you owe. If the payment is not sufficient to pay the entire balance due for your unposted courses, the batch/course will not post.
To calculate the posting fee, multiply the total number of attendance hours submitted by $2.00. For example, 10 attendees who each attended for 1.5 hours, would cost $30.00. If one of the attendees was the speaker and provided ten pages of handouts, the cost is $27.00 for the attendees (9 x 1.5 hours x $2.00) and $12.00 for the speaker (4 times 1.5 hours times $2.00) for a total amount due of $39.00 ($27.00 + $12.00).
NO. Any subsequent postings to the same attorney’s account for the same course are seen as duplicate postings and are ignored. To correct an erroneously reported attendance amount, you must contact the CLE Commission and request to have the incorrect posting deleted. Then you can submit the correct attendance for that attorney again. Don’t forget to pay the posting fee for the new attendance being reported.
Instructions on how to make an online payment may be found here.
“CLE Commission” is sufficient. Please include your BPR number on the check or in the correspondence accompanying the check so funds are properly applied.
Tennessee does not charge a fee to accredit a course. Providers pay fees for attorney attendance when attendance is submitted to the Commission. Providers pay $2 per approved credit hour for each attorney licensed in Tennessee who attends the program. This provider’s fee, along with the list of attendees, should be submitted electronically through the Commission’s website within thirty (30) days after the program is held. Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 21 §8.02(a).
Yes. A speaker whose presentation is accompanied by five or more pages of thorough, high quality, readable and carefully prepared written materials will qualify for CLE credit on the basis of four hours of credit for each hour of presentation. Presentations accompanied by less than five pages of outlines, or not accompanied by written materials, qualify for CLE credit on the basis of two credits per hour of presentation. Repeat presentations qualify for one-half of the credits awarded for the initial presentation. CLE credit is earned as of the date the CLE presentation occurs.
In general, an “in-house activity” (defined as an activity conducted primarily for the benefit of attorneys in a single firm, corporation, or governmental entity) does not qualify for CLE credit.
Courses sponsored by law firms that are strictly limited to in-house counsel and/or clients and primarily for the benefit of attorneys are not eligible for CLE credit. However, if the course is open in some significant manner to a broad spectrum of the bar, either in geographical area or in the field of practice, it qualifies for CLE credit.
Any joint training activity conducted for the attorneys of a governmental department is not considered “in-house” if (1) it is open to all department attorneys in the state and (2) at least fifty percent (50%) of the approved hours are taught by speakers not otherwise associated with the department.
The Commission may deny accreditation to activities lacking substantive merit as a continuing legal education activity.
See Regulations 5A, 5I.
Courses dealing with the disciplinary rules or ethical considerations applicable to attorneys receive Dual credit (which counts toward either the Ethics/Professionalism (E/P) or the General requirement, as needed by the attorney). Law practice management topics, stress management, time management, staff training and supervision, substance abuse awareness and action, general skills (e.g., speed reading), budgeting, and similar topics receive E/P credit only.
Courses that address substantive law and legal training (e.g., courtroom and trial skills presentation, deposition training, legal research) receive General credit only.
All programs must be primarily intended for attorneys, not a general audience. See Regulation 5H.
“Dual” credits are hours of CLE that can be used either toward the General or toward the Ethics/Professionalism requirement. However, Dual credits do not count twice! (In other words, you cannot receive 2 hours of credit for 1 hour of attendance).
Dual credits are first applied toward Ethics/Professionalism requirements, and any remaining hours are applied as General credit.
Yes. To earn one hour of CLE credit, the attorney must complete sixty minutes of instruction not counting breaks, etc. See Regulation 3A.
