CLE – Know How

Remote Access to Online CPD Materials

Did you know that you can remotely access continuing professional development (CPD) materials through the Great Library’s catalogue? Whether searching through the “Everything”¹or “CPD”²tab (shown below), you can search, summon, download and send digitized CPD materials remotely.

Searches using the “Everything” tab are conducted on the search platform InfoLocate. While searches on this platform will summon results other than CPD materials, you can use the filter “Online Law Society CLE Articles” found on the left to narrow your results to only include online CPD materials. See below:

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Searches using the “CPD” tab are conducted using the database AccessCLE. This database is home to hundreds of free, digitized PDFs of Law Society of Ontario CPD materials.

Another place to look for online CPD materials is CanLII. The County of Carleton Law Association CPD materials from 2018 and 2019 were recently made available on CanLII’s “Commentary” platform. Find these by navigating to the “Conference Proceedings” link on the Commentary page, or click here.

Having access to CPD materials can really come in handy as they are a great way to keep up to date on emerging legal issues and can act as primers or introductory overviews of major legal topics in a given field. They are also great tools for finding forms and precedents!

Legal Research Survival Guide, Part 5 – CPD/CLE as Field Notes

Every year, lawyers and paralegals who are practising law or providing legal services in Ontario must complete at least twelve continuing professional development (CPD) hours. Formerly called Continuing Legal Education (CLE) in Ontario, it is known by either name in other jurisdictions. The Great Library collects CPD/CLE print materials made available from select providers such as the Law Society of Ontario, the Ontario Bar Association, the Canadian Bar Association, and LawPro.

Law Society Improves Access to Current CPD Materials by Lifting Embargo

The Great Library’s AccessCLE continuing legal education digital repository provides free access to Law Society CPD materials. Now the embargo, which limited access to the most recent CPD materials, has been removed.

Great news for legal practitioners, researchers and law librarians! The Law Society of Ontario has eliminated its embargo on new CPD materials available through AccessCLE. Now even the most recently added papers from 2019 programs are free to print or download in PDF format.