Often, we find ourselves making personal and professional goals for the coming year, so you might as well go ahead and make this year your year to take the Certified Legal Manager (CLM)® exam. You know you have the experience, and you know you have the dedication to be successful on the exam.
As you may know, the goal of the CLM exam is to demonstrate the mastery of the core areas of knowledge which have been identified as essential to the effective performance of a principal administrator. An individual who gains their certification should be able to walk into any 30 to 50 lawyer firm and be able to review their practices and procedures. In addition, they should be able to be conversant about and offer advice in all areas of legal administration without relying on others.
All information pertaining to the CLM exam is located on the ALA website under Certification. However, I will walk you through the education requirements and application process then tell you a bit about what is included in the exam.
There are three pieces you will need to qualify to take the exam: 1) an experience requirement, 2) an educational requirement, and 3) endorsement of the ALA Code of Ethics. To satisfy the experience requirement, you will need three full-time years of experience as a principal administrator or branch office manager of a legal department in an exempt position; OR have three full-time years of experience in a supervisory position as an exempt level specialist in financial management, human resources management, systems management, facilities management, marketing management or practice management. If you are unsure of where you fall, there are job descriptions located online under the application requirements section located here.
To meet the education requirement, everyone will need 10 hours of qualifying coursework within the 24 months preceding the exam with two hours in each of the five areas: writing skills, communication skills, self-management skills, information technology and organizational development.
Those who are functional specialists will need the preceding education requirements AND an additional 15 hours of qualifying coursework in financial management, human resources management, legal industry/business management or operations (includes technology). These 15 hours of study may not be in their field of specialty. For instance, if I were a human resources director for a firm needing the additional 15 hours of study, I would choose courses in financial management, legal industry/business management or operations. Additional courses in human resources management would not count towards this 15-hour requirement for me.
This may sound like a lot of hours of educational requirements, but if you have been to an ALA Annual Conference, attended webinars from chapters that offer CLM credit or attended other webinars that qualify for CLE, CPE or SHRM/HRCI credits, you may already have enough or most of the hours to qualify for the exam. It is just a matter of outlining all your courses and verifying that you have everything you need. I suggest you start by downloading the application worksheet (part of the paper application mentioned in the next section), which allows you to gather all your educational requirements for the exam in one place. If you are having trouble recalling all the webinars or ALA education sessions you have attended, review your calendar for the last two years and see what you’ve attended.
The last requirement is for you to sign the ALA Code of Ethics, which can be downloaded from the paper application area of the ALA website. This code of ethics is a guide for you to use in conducting yourself professionally in the management of law firms. It outlines an ALA member’s responsibility to the legal management profession, legal service organizations and others. In my experience, meeting many ALA members across the country, I don’t think any ALA member would have an issue following this code of ethics.
Now that you’ve decided you want to take the exam and you know you have the educational requirement, when can you apply for the exam? You can apply at any time, but there are deadlines for each exam window in the spring and fall. The next test date window is May 6 to 31, and the application deadline is March 7.
Application fees for the exam are $529 for ALA members and $629 for nonmembers. You may apply online here under the “New and Retake Application for Certification” link or if you prefer a paper application you may follow the link for those under the paper applications section.
The exam content was developed through a job analysis, which identified the competencies needed to be a legal administrator. From this job analysis the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) were developed and sorted by four major categories — financial management, human resources, business management/legal industry and operations. These four broad categories are broken down further into nine subject areas — general accounting, financial information and analysis, employee selection and promotion, performance management and compensation, organizational development, legal industry, business management, technology, and operations.
As the exams are developed each year, the blueprint requires the questions to be allocated as follows:
There is a Content Outline of the Body of Knowledge located on the ALA website, which breaks this down further and gives a description of each category.
The entire exam consists of 125 multiple choice questions, of which 25 questions are piloted questions. These piloted questions do not contribute to your score on the exam. The responses to these piloted questions are reviewed to determine if the questions are appropriate for use in future exams. Even before a test question is piloted, each question goes through a multiphase process to determine if it is appropriate for the exam.
With the vast body of knowledge, you may be wondering where to start with a study plan for the exam. Earlier I mentioned the Content Outline of the Body of Knowledge. When I studied for the exam, I used this body of knowledge as an outline of what I needed to study. I began by identifying my strengths and weaknesses in each major category on the exam. I focused more on human resources than other candidates might have, since I thought that area was my primary weakness. I ended up scoring the highest in that area, so I guess my work paid off.
There are numerous resources available to use to study for the exam. Among the most popular are The Study Guide for CLM Exam; ALA online learning; chapter study groups; Human Resources Management by Mathis and Jackson; Annotated Model Rules of Professional Conduct; Law Firm Accounting and Financial Management by Quinn, Bailey, Gaulin and Kolodziejczak; and Managing the Professional Services Firm by Maister. There are additional resources outlined on the ALA website here. Keep in mind that this exam is for everyone in ALA so any laws that are referenced on the exam will be U.S. Federal Laws.
I hope you have learned more about the CLM exam, the requirements, and the application process. ALA headquarters has done a great job of outlining all this information on the ALA website under Certification. Just be prepared to do a deep dive, not a short glance, when you review this information online. If you have questions during the application process or about the requirements needed for the exam, reach out to headquarters at [email protected]. Good luck on the exam!
*This article is reprinted with permission from Cyber Bytes Newsletter, December 6, 2023, published by the Association of Legal Administrators Cyber Chapter, cyberala.org. Some minor style edits were made.
You have taken a pivotal step by choosing to pursue the CLM exam. The first step in attaining your CLM designation is the application process for the exam. This webinar aims to assist you with this crucial first task to ensure you understand the skills and educational requirements necessary to complete the form with confidence.
This free webinar takes place on Friday, February 23, at noon Central. Register here.