Court Is Assembled

Ready? Set. Go! Readiness in Legal Training and Education Across the JAG Corps

By Colonel Keirsten H. Kennedy

Article published on: May 1, 2026 in the 2026 Issue 1 of Army Lawyer

Read Time: < 10 mins

Readiness is not a very controversial topic in and of itself: it’s generally good to be ready, and it’s bad to not be ready—especially if you’re supposed to be ready. Overall, being ready has positive connotations in all aspects of life. There is even a certain playfulness when you ask someone if they’re ready, or an anticipation when you’re in the sprinter’s blocks being told to get ready. Readiness in the realm of training and education should invoke that same kind of delight: learning is supposed to be fun, an activity you approach with anticipation.

The Army’s storied history of combat readiness as a tagline dates back the full 250 years of our existence, with increasing popularity as operational tempos increased throughout American military history. Lately, “[i]t’s a watchword of current U.S. military strategy, the subject of constant media attention, congressional deliberation and internal discussion among the armed forces and our allies.”1So, for Judge Advocate Legal Services (JALS) personnel, what does it mean to be “ready”? And how do we, as members of our profession of arms, maintain our requisite legal readiness?

Military readiness is so fundamental to U.S. foreign and domestic national security policy that Congress examined the issue more closely in the fall of 2020, noting that every year, the Department of War (DoW) “requests and Congress authorizes and appropriates billions of dollars in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funding to support what the [DoW] calls readiness.”2Their report likens military readiness to a linear production line, listing three stages of building, increasing, and sustaining readiness to fight and win the Nation’s wars.3Under provisions of U.S. Code Title 10, the DoW is required to maintain military readiness (Section 117)4and report on its state of readiness (Section 118).5It thus becomes pivotal to understand what kinds of “readiness” the Army requires of its Service members.

Training and education as an endeavor is a large part of the readiness equation, and it makes a huge, qualitative difference in the expert level of your legal advice, reviews, and products.

Kinds of Readiness

We are all familiar with the mandate for medical readiness, mainly through notifications of green/amber/red status alerts, which prompt us to obtain dental checks, annual physicals, inoculations, or other medical checkups the Army tracks to ensure deployability.6The idea of personal readiness encompasses five pillars: physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and family.7Being up to date and healthy in all five of those categories is essential to successful military service; however, the most often overlooked key to success as an attorney (judge advocate (JA) or civil servant), paralegal, paraprofessional, or warrant officer is readiness in training and education.

Of course, professional military education (PME) is the Army’s foundation for its military members to ensure the requisite baseline knowledge in our occupational specialties. This is the minimum required for training readiness. But JALS personnel must understand that PME is only part of one of three ways of ensuring training readiness. The three domains of learning occur at these levels: institutional, operational, and individual.8An easy way to illustrate this three-level model is this: things I learned through schooling, things I learned while at my job, and things I sought out to learn on my own. That is the institutional domain, the operational domain, and the self-development domain.9

Service members attend PME—institutional learning/training—mandatorily through Army policy,10which ensures we receive the information and skills required to perform our near-term military legal duties. Essentially, the Army tells us to attend certain training at schools to successfully perform our anticipated duties. The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School (TJAGLCS) also offers functional short courses (usually one week long) for institutional training in specific areas of law, like domestic operations, advocacy, contract law, labor law, legal leadership role preparation, paralegal studies, and many others. These non-PME short courses generally fall under the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps areas of legal practice: administrative, civil, contract, fiscal, criminal, and national security law.11

At the operational level, we gather job experience and also participate in unit training through our specific assignments (e.g., leader professional development or other training our units may offer). Leaders in an Office of the Staff Judge Advocate (OSJA) design unit-level training to enhance their subordinates’ opportunities to learn more about how to perform well within their current jobs. As a national security law (NSL) attorney, the NSL chief within a division or corps may design a learning program leading up to a Warfighter exercise12or Command Post Exercise (CPX)13using a weekly training program for the team.

Whether it is designed from TJAGLCS’s Training, Resources, and Publications (TRP) website,14or using TJAGLCS’s Center for Law and Military Operations (CLAMO) resources,15leaders have ample resources to train their teams for specific upcoming legal missions. Staff judge advocates (SJAs) frequently rely on TJAGLCS’s Leadership Department training materials to implement their monthly Leader Development Programs (LDPs) to enhance leadership training within their OSJAs using web resources or the toolkit provided at TJAGLCS’s Key Leader Course (KLC). These unit-level training opportunities enhance training readiness for JALS personnel across the JAG Corps and complement the institutional training offerings to ensure the most timely, useful, accurate legal advice to Army Warfighters.

Lastly, individual training (also called self-development) consists of opportunities we seek and take advantage of on our own;16this can encompass professional reading, instruction outside our current duties, or a course of study we design on our own for the joy of learning something new (perhaps related to or supporting our career paths). How much we engage in this training domain will usually set apart an attorney, paralegal, paraprofessional, and warrant officer from their peers. We have limited time to devote to self-development in our lives, as it competes with time we must make for other obligations related to health, family, and other personal pursuits. That is as it should be: the near-impossible task of “balancing” our lives when it comes to divvying up professional and personal time can be difficult.

As a humble suggestion for keeping up in this learning domain: among all the self-development activities you could choose to engage in, may I recommend you prioritize professional reading? And, even more specifically, I must admit I should call it “professional listening.” I am obsessed with filling my dog-walking, household chores, and gym workouts with listening to audiobooks available free of charge through the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Libraries.17I have found the easiest way to professionally develop yourself has got to be audiobooks and podcasts. Check out some TJAGLCS podcasts: Hold My Reg (Administrative & Civil Law Department); CAAF Chats (Criminal Law Department); The FAR and Beyond (Contract & Fiscal Law); NSL Unscripted (National Security Law Department); and Mentorship Matters (Leadership Department).18

In all of our readiness pursuits, for JALS personnel, training and education are certainly at the forefront when it comes to professional success in the JAG Corps. Beyond the baseline military requirements of readiness in terms of physical fitness, medical preparedness, and other personal health (e.g., mental, spiritual), readiness in the realm of training and education—across all three domains—is the best way we can support the Warfighter (our clients). The legal advice we give absolutely depends on the knowledge and experience we gain through training and education readiness. TJAGLCS is a big part of the institutional domain and even in supporting the operational training domain through standard training packages and learning program design templates; however, you decide on your participation and progress in the individual self-development domain.19A great interest-paced learning resource that TJAGLCS has recently launched is the Leader’s Legal Library (LLL).20Designed specifically for non-JA leaders to better understand legal concepts, the landing page of LLL states:

This resource is designed to empower Army command teams and leaders at all levels with practical legal knowledge to support mission success and help us stay ready, agile, and lethal. Each video and other posted resource offers clear, actionable guidance rooted in military law and policy as well as in real-world leadership experience.21

JALS personnel can easily navigate and share these videos and one-page references to learn and share with others.

In closing, and in acknowledgment that self-development is the most challenging of the three learning domains that undergird readiness, I offer this piece of advice as a person who has learned over time that she is perhaps a little bit lazy, sometimes feels swamped with everyday work, and is maybe a bit selfish when it comes to how she wants to allocate her free time: self-development can also be a team sport. Surround yourself with motivated, curious, energetic friends. Join that book club. Check out that French class with your buddy. Tag along with a non-legal friend to their unit LPD. Co-author an article with your co-worker. Ask your colleagues about their jobs and what they’re learning—join in! These are valid self-development pursuits that inevitably lead to achievements in that sometimes-illusory third learning domain of self-development.

Readiness is mandatory, in accordance with Army policy, as reflected in all the activities and checklists we are required (and encouraged) to pursue and complete throughout our military careers. Training and education as an endeavor is a large part of the readiness equation, and it makes a huge, qualitative difference in the expert level of your legal advice, reviews, and products. Many resources are readily available for institutional, operational, and individual learning domains, so pursue these with purpose—and spread the word on JAG Corps training and education opportunities. Conversely, sharing what you learn is a big part of training and education: you can submit legal lessons learned on the CLAMO website;22 teaching what you learn is a known way to solidify your own learning and knowledge.23Your stewardship, in training yourself and those you lead, will certainly be the most important contribution to the Army’s mission success, all in line with being the JAG Corps the Army needs.24So, grab your curiosity and eagerness to know, and . . . Ready? Set. Go!

Notes