Purpose and Membership
The College recognizes Texas lawyers who voluntarily attend at least double the minimum Continuing Legal Education (CLE) classes required by the State Bar of Texas. While the State Bar of Texas mandates that every licensed attorney complete at least fifteen hours of continuing legal education classes each year, the College requires its members to double that number by attending thirty hours per year.
As of 2006, it was the only organization in the United States formed for the specific purpose of promoting and recognizing attorneys who strive to maintain and enhance their professional skills and the quality of their practice through voluntary participation in CLE programs. Historically, only about eight percent of the licensed attorneys in Texas (4,100 out of 63,500 in 1999) meet the requirements for membership in the College of the State Bar of Texas. The motto of the College is: "Professionalism Through Education."
Since 1993, the College of the State Bar has each year presented a lawyer with the Jim Bowmer Professionalism Award, an annual honor established to recognize members who have significantly contributed to professionalism within the legal community, as well as a Franklin Jones Best CLE Article Award and a Steve Condos Most CLE Hours Award.
Read more about this topic: College Of The State Bar Of Texas
Famous quotes containing the words purpose and, purpose and/or membership:
“Your good mother tells me you are feeling very badly in your new situation. Allow me to assure you it is a perfect certainty that you will, very soon, feel better—quite happy—if you only stick to the resolution you have taken to procure a military education. I am older than you, have felt badly myself, and know, what I tell you is true. Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“A major misunderstanding of child rearing has been the idea that meeting a child’s needs is an end in itself, for the purpose of the child’s mental health. Mothers have not understood that this is but one step in social development, the goal of which is to help a child begin to consider others. As a result, they often have not considered their children but have instead allowed their children’s reality to take precedence, out of a fear of damaging them emotionally.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)