What Are the CLE Requirements for Hawaii Attorneys?

Under RSCH Rule 22 of the Hawaii Supreme Court Rules, every active member of the bar must complete at least 3 credit hours of approved continuing legal education during each annual reporting period.

The rule sets those 3 hours as the floor of the annual requirement; the ethics hour inside it is covered below.

Certification of the hours happens on the annual bar registration form, covered in the reporting section below.

The only specialty requirement in the rule text we read is ethics: at least once every 3 years in which CLE credits are required, every active member must complete 1 hour of approved ethics or professional responsibility education, counted within the annual 3 hours rather than on top of them.

That text names no separate bias, wellness or technology credit — what it does is widen what the ethics hour can cover, including mental-health and substance-abuse topics, client trust administration, bias awareness and access to justice.

One summary error is worth flagging: the annual 3 hours are general CLE, not an ethics total.

The rule and the Hawaii State Bar's own CLE page both state at least 3 credit hours of CLE each year with at least 1 ethics credit every 3 years.

The rule text we read describes no separate course-by-course filing: each active member of the bar certifies on the annual bar registration form whether they are in compliance with the rule.

The Hawaii State Bar is the unified mandatory bar the Hawaii Supreme Court established under RSCH Rule 17, and the CLE certification is made on the annual bar registration form.

The rule also requires records for the three most recent reporting periods.

The rule text we read does not state a due date for the registration form, so check the current registration materials from the bar for the deadline that applies.

Newly licensed Hawaii lawyers who go active in their year of licensure are excused from the 3 CLE hours for that year.

That excuse does not reach the separate Hawaii Professionalism Course, which they must still complete.

Lawyers licensed after July 1, 2001 must finish it by December 31 of the year after they elect active status.

Our research cannot answer this one: the RSCH Rule 22 text we read does not state whether Hawaii caps online, recorded or on-demand coursework, or whether credits must be live or interactive.

That is a gap in our research, not a finding that recorded courses count the same as live ones.

Before you build a reporting period around on-demand programs, confirm the current treatment with the Hawaii State Bar or the published rule text.

Hawaii allows limited carryover: a member may carry forward from the previous reporting period a maximum of 3 excess CLE credit hours, including ethics credits, earned in the immediately preceding calendar year — a cap the same size as the annual requirement itself.

On exemptions, the rule addresses two statuses directly.

Newly licensed lawyers who go active in their licensure year are excused from that year's 3 hours, and lawyers returning from inactive status must complete and report 3 hours of approved CLE, including 1 hour of ethics, within 3 months of electing active status.

The text we read names no other exemption categories, so ask the Hawaii State Bar before assuming a change in status changes what you owe.

This is where our research runs out: the RSCH Rule 22 text we read requires each active member to certify compliance on the annual bar registration form, but it does not state what follows a missed deadline or a shortfall.

Any late or non-compliance fee would sit in Hawaii State Bar regulations our research did not read, so we cannot state a fee amount, a cure period or any consequence for licensure.

Those are questions to put to the Hawaii State Bar before you rely on any deadline.