Continuing Education
I found years ago that Continuing Education was all voluntary. The
quality of the training was excellent and we could select some high
level of information and training coming from those who are voluntarily
putting it together.
When
the law changed, required us to have Continuing Education, it was
stamped out, commercialized, standardized, down to where Continuing
Education credits were perfunctory. You go and sit in a class, they
didn't grade you, you just had to get your hours done, typically 12
hours a year or 24 hours every two years so the quality went way down.
Most
recently, I have taken the Continuing Education classes that do allow
for my proper credit given but from attorneys and CPAs that it's
Continuing Education for attorneys. It's Continuing Education for CPAs
so it's very difficult. Just recently, I was in one with 63 attorneys,
talked about estate planning. I was the only one who was the
non-attorney in the meeting. I received my credit and we also had
wonderful opportunities to visit many, many different situations with
case studies of their clients. There were four different attorneys
making the presentation and I was able to ask any question I wanted,
which I asked several, throughout the 8-hour period during the day.
I
found it kind of interesting to pay a fee of $279 and be able to ask
any question I wanted to four attorneys on estate planning for an
8-hour period. Personally, I was thrilled with that value. I can't
imagine where you could go to find anything better. The conclusion is
that I've found that I have a thirst for knowledge and if we do not
continually challenge our beliefs, challenge the way we think,
everything is changing around us, so to challenge our beliefs, give us
an opportunity to learn and to grow and improve so that we can do much
better for our clients.