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Every month, thousands of attorneys complete CLE courses on Lawline, and the courses that rise to the top tell us something. They reflect what's keeping practitioners up at night, where clients are asking harder questions, and which skills are becoming non-negotiable in day-to-day practice.
This month, we're doing something a little different: a countdown of March's three most-completed courses. The topics span practice areas and career stages, but they share a common thread: they offer us a glimpse into the minds of attorneys who want to stay ahead, not just stay compliant.
#3: Ethical Social Media Use for Attorneys: Best Practices & Rules
Presented by Ron Hedges and Marissa Moran
Ron Hedges maintains a solo practice in Hackensack, New Jersey, and spent over two decades on the federal bench in Newark. He is a contributor to the Sedona Conference and serves on the court technology committee of the ABA Judicial Division, as well as on the New Jersey and New York artificial intelligence committees. Marissa Moran is chair of the Law and Legal Studies and paralegal studies department at New York City College of Technology, an ABA-approved program in Brooklyn. She is vice chair of both the legal technology committee and the AI and emerging technology committee of the New York State Bar Association.
Together, they walk through the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as they apply to attorney use of social media, offering a practical framework for decisions attorneys make every day. The course covers competence and confidentiality obligations when using social platforms, supervision responsibilities that extend to paralegals and outside experts, advertising and solicitation rules, and the nuances of researching witnesses, jurors, and opposing parties online. It also addresses increasingly relevant territory: how protective orders can be drafted to account for AI tools used in discovery, and what an attorney's duty looks like when a client's social media content becomes relevant to litigation.
One of the more memorable observations from the course: the ethical rules around social media may feel like common sense, but the case law shows these violations happen often not out of bad intent, but because attorneys don't pause before they post.
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#2: The One-Hour Estate Planning Consultation That Closes the Deal
Presented by Shawn D. Garner of Deason Garner & Hansen Law Firm
Shawn Garner has spent fifteen years practicing estate planning exclusively and has drafted over 10,000 estate plans. This course is built around a problem he identifies early and revisits throughout: attorneys who are technically skilled at estate planning often lose clients not because they gave bad advice, but because they never created a clear path from consultation to signed agreement.
The course uses a detailed case study: a blended family with mismatched asset titles, an unfunded IRA, a financially vulnerable heir, and an inheritance that would be decimated by double probate under a "simple will". Through this case, Garner shows exactly what goes wrong when an attorney lets the client set the agenda. Garner then walks through a do-over: how to structure the intake process before the appointment, how to use a shared screen to review assets and distribution preferences in real time, how to present an outline rather than a final plan so clients leave with clarity instead of overwhelm, and how to have the legal services agreement signed before the client walks out the door.
The course is as much about practice management as it is about estate planning law, and that combination is likely what made it resonate with such a broad audience this month.
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And now, March's most-completed course, and it probably won't surprise you.
#1: AI Governance: Ethics, Bias, and Privacy
Presented by Elizabeth Elices
Elizabeth Elices is an attorney licensed in New Jersey and New York, with expertise in compliance, risk management, and data privacy. She presented this course as a state-of-the-landscape overview as of March 2026: deliberately current and practical.
The course opens with anti-bias legislation and frameworks, covering New York City's automated decision tool law, which requires employers using AI in hiring or promotion decisions to conduct annual independent bias audits and publish the results. It then moves to New Jersey's attorney general guidelines on algorithmic discrimination, which apply the state's existing anti-discrimination law directly to AI tools. From there, Elices examines the NAIC model bulletin on AI systems, a document that roughly half of U.S. states have used as a foundation for their own insurance-sector AI governance, and the Colorado AI Act, which went into effect in February 2026 and takes a risk-based approach that cuts across industries rather than targeting a single sector.
The second half of the course turns to privacy, covering GDPR basics for attorneys whose clients operate internationally, COPPA as updated by the FTC in mid-2025 to address children's data and AI training, and the California Consumer Privacy Act's provisions on automated decision-making. Elices also addresses biometric privacy and deepfakes, including the Take It Down Act signed in 2025. She closes with a look at where federal AI regulation stands, including the December 2025 executive order, and what the ABA's ethical guidance means in practice: that understanding AI tools is increasingly part of the duty of competence, and that sloppy use of AI can result in inadvertent disclosure of confidential client information.
It's a course that earns its top spot. The law around AI is being written in real time, and this is one of the clearest maps available.
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What's Next on Your Learning Journey?
Whether your practice touches estate planning, litigation, or emerging technology, March's top courses reflect a profession that's asking harder questions and looking for concrete answers. All three are available on demand at Lawline.
Ready to join the thousands of legal professionals who chose these courses to advance their careers? Explore our full catalog and discover the knowledge that will transform your practice today.
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