12 credit hours per year, reported every year. Verified against the AK bar or court authority.
| Total CLE required | 12 credit hours per year |
|---|---|
| Ethics requirement | 3 hrs |
| Reporting cycle | Every year |
| Online CLE accepted | Yes |
| Accreditation route | Self-determination |
Note: Requirement increased from 3 to 12 hrs/year effective Jan 1, 2025.
Alaska requires 12 hours every year. That matches 20 of the 46 jurisdictions that mandate CLE, the most common requirement in the country.
Alaska does not carry a separate wellness or mental health category. Wellness and secondary trauma training is generally applied toward the general credit requirement here. That puts wellness training in the largest credit category bucket. Of the 51 United States jurisdictions, 16 recognize wellness or mental health credit specifically and 16 mandate bias or inclusion credit, which means most attorneys satisfy this kind of training as general hours.
Alaska requires 12 hours each year, of which 3 are earmarked for ethics. That leaves roughly 9 hours each year that you choose the content for. Those are the hours in question.
The 2026 national study of 39,036 lawyers found that 47.5 percent reported high or very high work-related burnout, and that moderate or higher symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress ran at 21.6, 20.4 and 18.9 percent. The earlier 2016 study had found something that surprised the profession: the risk concentrated among younger attorneys and those in their first ten years. The prior assumption ran the other way. It is shaping the careers of the people a firm has most recently invested in.
Exposure follows the material rather than the job title, and it is not only the attorneys and advocates who carry it. It reaches past the bar as well. Court reporters, clerks, and interpreters process the same testimony with none of the professional distance an advocate's role provides, and court interpreters voice it in the first person. Firms, offices, and courts in Alaska whose work runs through material like this carry more of it than a general commercial practice does, and their training needs differ accordingly.
These are competence issues, not comfort issues. They surface as missed deadlines, degraded judgment on live matters, ethics complaints, and the departure of lawyers a firm has already paid to train. If Alaska is going to require the time anyway, it can be spent on the thing that is measurably breaking.
Alaska requires 12 credit hours per year. Of that, the ethics requirement is 3 hrs. The reporting cycle runs every year.
Yes. Rules on self-study versus live or interactive formats vary, and newly admitted attorneys are often held to stricter requirements than experienced ones. Confirm with the accrediting authority before enrolling.
Alaska does not maintain a separate wellness or mental health credit category. Such programming is generally applied toward general credit. Many states permit self-application of general credit using a certificate of attendance; confirm the process with the accrediting authority.
Self-determination. Requirements change, so verify directly with the issuing authority before relying on any summary, including this one.
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