Since 1975, the bench and bar of the vast majority of jurisdictions in the United States have implemented programs of mandatory continuing legal education (MCLE) for their attorneys. Typically, the justification for these programs has been rooted in a desire to keep lawyers abreast of all the latest developments in the law and to provide them with an opportunity to hone their legal skills. The universal hope among the states that have mandated continuing legal education is that better educated attorneys will best serve the needs of the public. In 2010, New Jersey became the 45th state to require MCLE as a condition for ongoing licensure to practice law. This new rule required that each attorney and judge complete 24 hours of MCLE training every two years. As a component of the mandate, each judge and attorney had to participate in at least four credits of training in the subjects of ethics and professionalism. The New Jersey Supreme Court's hope in requiring this topic of instruction was, through education, to reduce reported incidents of unethical or unprofessional conduct by attorneys. As a result of this curriculum mandate, since 2010, untold thousands of hours and financial resources have been spent by New Jersey practitioners in taking classes related to professional ethics. Given this enormous investment, the question should be raised as to whether all this mandatory instruction has had any impact in reducing the annual number of grievances and formal ethics complaints against New Jersey attorneys over the first 12 years of MCLE instruction. Moreover, if there has been no discernible impact for this instruction on attorney misconduct, what can be done to make ethics instruction more effective? This research sought to answer both these questions. In conducting this study, the researcher used a mixed methods approach to evaluate three data sets. These included publicly available disciplinary data from the New Jersey Supreme Court, targeted interviews among practicing New Jersey attorneys, and a random survey distributed among New Jersey judges and lawyers. The results of study revealed there was no statistical evidence to suggest that MCLE in ethics and professionalism has had any impact at all on annual incidents of attorney grievances and formal complaints. In addition, the findings from the interview data allowed for the development of a grounded theory. It posits that MCLE ethics instruction can be made vastly more effective by way of targeted instruction to discrete learning cohorts of attorneys based upon their practice areas and their need to learn about how to avoid commonly occurring disciplinary violations. This change would require a re-imagining of the current free market method of providing MCLE ethics instruction and the institution of an administratively controlled, regulated system of classes, taught by highly experienced, accredited instructors. The premise of this theory was amply supported by the data gathered from the random attorney online survey. This study adds to the body of knowledge related to the effectiveness of MCLE instruction in general and the teaching of ethics and professionalism to practitioners. The study also advocates for the need for future research and annual monitoring of the ongoing effectiveness of MCLE instruction and its ability to reduce reported incidents of attorney professional misconduct. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]