What Are the CLE Requirements for Colorado Attorneys?

Active Colorado lawyers under age 72 must complete 45 CLE credit hours per compliance period, including 7 hours of professional responsibility.

A compliance period runs three full calendar years.

The 45-hour total covers all credit types combined; how the professional-responsibility hours break down is under specialty credits below.

The 7 professional-responsibility hours carry Colorado's specialty requirements: at least 2 credit hours in equity, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) and at least 5 in legal ethics or legal professionalism.

Together, those minimums account for the full 7 hours.

The CLE pages our research read name no wellness or technology credit, so those are not requirements in the rules we verified — confirm the current credit types with the regulator before you plan a period around one.

Colorado CLE must be completed by December 31 of the final year of your compliance period, with reporting allowed until January 31 of the following year.

Colorado is a self-reporting state: each lawyer enters their own credits at cletrack.coloradosupremecourt.com, and CLE sponsors do not report attendance for you.

A credit earned in the period's final weeks therefore still counts, as long as it is entered by the January 31 reporting deadline.

The first compliance period is the newly admitted lawyer's rule: it starts on the admission date and ends December 31 of the third full calendar year after admission, so lawyers admitted at any point in a given year close their first period on the same December 31.

Our research found no separate first-period hour total or transition curriculum — the 45-hour requirement, including its 7 professional-responsibility hours, applies from the first period on.

Yes.

Accredited on-demand programs — homestudy, in the rule's terms — count toward Colorado's requirement, and our research found no cap on accredited homestudy credits.

The cap that does exist applies to non-accredited independent study: a maximum of 9 general credits per three-year compliance period, and independent study cannot earn professional-responsibility credit at all.

On exemptions the rule is explicit: a lawyer who remains on active status becomes exempt from MCLE in the compliance period in which they turn 72.

On carryover, our research did not confirm whether unused Colorado credits roll into the next period, or in what amount — the pages we read did not settle it, so we do not quote a carry-over figure.

Treat carryover as an open question and check C.R.C.P.

250 before planning a period around credits you did not use.

This is the gap in our research: we did not confirm Colorado's late-compliance fees or the consequences of missing the deadline, so we state no late fee, grace period or suspension process; the court's CLE noncompliance page (coloradolegalregulation.com/current-lawyers/clenoncompliance/) and C.R.C.P.

250 are where to check.

The fixed points are the deadlines above — credits complete by December 31, reported by January 31 — and any extension, waiver or penalty question goes to the Colorado Supreme Court's CLE office.