Attorneys' and Judges' Needs for Continuing Legal Education on Mental Disability Law: Findings from a Survey

Abstract

Attorneys leave law school with limited knowledge and skills concerning the issues that arise in mental disability law. Yet psychiatrists and psychologists are appearing with increasing frequency as witnesses in the nation's courts, and more attorneys and judges can therefore expect to have to deal with testimony from mental health professionals. To our knowledge, this article is the first published assessment of practicing attorneys' and judges' needs for continuing legal education (CLE) on mental disability issues. The 267 Dayton-area attorneys and 41 southwestern Ohio judges who responded to our mailed survey said that one-seventh of their cases raise issues related to mental health or mental disability. Most responders had not taken any law school courses that dealt with mental disability issues; those who had said their courses were only modestly helpful. CLE was the attorneys' and judges' principal source of information about mental disability law. For practicing attorneys, perceived need for CLE was related to the rate at which psychological issues arose in their practices; practicing lawyers and judges were interested primarily in CLE topics that related to the types of cases they handled or heard. Three-fourths of the attorneys and 95% of the judges said they would probably or definitely attend locally offered CLE on at least one subject. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that traditional law school course work relating to mental disability does not give future attorneys and judges the skills and knowledge necessary to their practices (e.g., the ability to challenge expert witnesses); CLE might help remedy this deficiency. Legal educators should use our findings when thinking about law school course content and postgraduate legal education.