45 credit hours every 3 years, reported every 3 years. Verified against the MN bar or court authority.
| Total CLE required | 45 credit hours every 3 years |
|---|---|
| Ethics requirement | 3 hrs |
| Reporting cycle | Every 3 years |
| Bias / EDI credit | 2 hrs elimination of bias |
| Wellness / mental health credit | 1 hr mental health / substance use |
| Online CLE accepted | Yes |
| Accreditation route | Approved (State Board of CLE) |
Note: Mental-health/substance-use hour required for compliance beginning 2025.
Minnesota's 45 hours over three years works out to 15 hours a year. That matches thirteen of the 46 jurisdictions that mandate CLE, the most common requirement in the country.
Minnesota recognizes wellness or mental health credit. 1 hr mental health / substance use This is the most direct route to satisfying part of your requirement with substantive training rather than a box-ticking exercise. AWP programs are built for exactly this category: live, taught by physicians, judges, and practising attorneys, and grounded in the neurobiology of cumulative stress rather than general wellness advice.
Minnesota requires 45 hours every 3 years, of which 3 are earmarked for ethics. That leaves roughly 42 hours every 3 years that you choose the content for. Those are the hours in question.
A systematic review of the research found secondary trauma in legal professionals to be significantly higher than in mental health professionals, social workers, psychologists, and prison officers. Criminal lawyers scored higher than non-criminal lawyers, and judges higher than barristers. This is not a resilience deficit. It is dose response to material the job requires you to handle.
Exposure follows the material rather than the job title, and it is not only the attorneys and advocates who carry it. Prosecutors and their investigators review evidence most professions never encounter, often without the debriefing structures that police and clinical staff receive as a matter of course. Firms, offices, and courts in Minnesota 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 Minnesota is going to require the time anyway, it can be spent on the thing that is measurably breaking.
Minnesota requires 45 credit hours every 3 years. Of that, the ethics requirement is 3 hrs. The reporting cycle runs every 3 years.
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.
Yes. Minnesota recognizes wellness or mental health credit: 1 hr mental health / substance use Attorney Wellness Project delivers live, accredited programming in this category, taught by attorneys, judges, physicians, psychologists, and coaches.
Approved (State Board of CLE). Requirements change, so verify directly with the issuing authority before relying on any summary, including this one.
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