The following Core Values reflect CLAE's guiding beliefs; they articulate what we stand for and inform the programs we offer, the goals we work towards and the standards we use to evaluate our success.

• Excellence in legal services practice: We believe that low-income people are entitled to the very best legal representation available and that training is an essential tool for developing and sustaining excellence in legal services practice.
  
  
• Client focus: We believe that the ultimate purpose of legal services training is to support advocates' abilities to provide the best possible service to clients.
  
• Affirmative advocacy and social change: We believe that legal services has a critical role to play in changing the conditions of poverty in America. Our training programs emphasize high impact as well as high quality advocacy.
  
  
• Excellence in legal services training: We believe that legal services advocates deserve the very best that training has to offer; to that end, we are committed to developing and sponsoring programs which reflect high quality and excellence in their design, organization and presentation.
  
  
• Diversity: We believe that training is a vehicle for both addressing diversity-related issues at the heart of our legal aid values and mission and for recruiting and retaining outstanding legal aid staff who reflect our communities' diversity.
  
  
• Life-long learning: We believe that learning, through training and other means, is a life-long process; we are committed to offering learning opportunities for advocates at all stages of their legal services careers.
  
  
• Community-building: We believe that "community" is an essential ingredient for instilling a sense of commitment to legal services practice and that training is a vehicle for building and sustaining a strong sense of community among legal services advocates locally, regionally and nationally.
  
  
• Leadership development: We believe that nurturing a diverse new generation of leaders is essential to the health of the legal services community and that training is an important vehicle for building and sustaining leadership throughout the legal services community; we do this by providing training on leadership skills as well as opportunities to serve as trainers.
  
  
• Innovation: We believe that training must be continually responsive to emerging needs and interests on the part of staff and clients; to that end, our existing training designs and materials must be regularly reviewed and updated and new programs and approaches developed.
  
  
• Evaluation: We believe that we must continually assess the effectiveness of our training resources and programs by engaging in both short and long-term evaluations. Long term evaluation examines the extent to which advocacy skills are actually enhanced, staff are more committed to legal services practice and how that commitment translates into successful outcomes for clients.