Solicitors will no longer need to complete a minimum of 16 hours a year continuing professional development (CPD) following the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) recent decision to radically change the CPD system. Under the new system, a solicitor will only need to:

Along with this comes the SRA’s proposal to stop accrediting CPD providers from 1 November 2014. Solicitors must then decide for themselves whether a training product hits the mark and the presenter is competent.

The new system will come into force from November 2016 but, assuming that it is approved by the Legal Services Board, firms will be able to adopt it voluntarily from February 2015.

Charles Clark, Global Knowledge & Learning Partner at Linklaters LLP, welcomes the changes: “I am really pleased to do away with the administrative burden of CPD points and to focus on what really matters: quality and relevance”. Clark adds, “I am also delighted that the SRA will allow firms to opt in to the new system before November 2016. October is the cruelest month for CPD admin.”

The SRA believes that the arbitrary 16-hour rule has become a tick-box exercise, with solicitors cramming in any old training towards the end of the CPD year just to meet the target. According to Patrick McCann, Head of Learning and Development, and Liz Byrne, Learning and Development Manager, at Herbert Smith Freehills LLP: “The focus of the scheme has been on certifying the number of hours completed rather than the quality of the training and how it has improved individual performance”.

The new, more flexible, system is designed to ensure that solicitors are competent while recognising that training needs vary and that firms and individuals are in the best position to know what training they need to do. It will, no doubt, be liberating for solicitors to be able to decide what training they need, and in what form to get that training.

“The CPD points system was good when it first came in; it changed the profession’s attitudes to keeping up-to-date, but times have changed. Learning now happens in so many different ways”, says Clark. “The growth of e-learning and blended learning techniques, and the 70:20:10 theory that only 10% of what you learn is from formal courses, mean that measuring the number of hours of classroom attendance is no longer appropriate.”

Another advantage of the new scheme is that training can be tailored to a solicitor’s own practice area. For example, if a solicitor has a repetitive role of limited scope, the SRA has conceded (at the T4T London roadshow) that he will not need much, if any, training. If his remit is wider, he may benefit from a much broader range of training topics but in less depth. It is for solicitors, or their firms, to work out what will keep them competent and to make sure that this need is met. For some, training on management skills or business skills will be ideally suited; something that would not have necessarily qualified under the existing CPD system.

McCann and Byrne feel that the new system will “redirect solicitors to take a more reflective approach to their learning and encourage them to take real control over their own competence. Bringing clarity to what the expected competence standards are (when we see them) and increasing the ways that solicitors can ensure that they are competent; for example, by learning on the job, are other aspects to be welcomed.”

A further aim of the new system, the need to cut costs, is one that the SRA is not so keen to articulate on paper but its representatives at the T4T roadshows have confirmed its relevance. The SRA will save time and money by no longer needing to accredit training providers or check CPD logs. The SRA asserts that this is in the interests of the profession because it helps to keep the practising fee down, and leaves the SRA with more resources to focus on firms or individuals that are not providing competent services. The SRA also acknowledges that, currently, it does little to assure the quality of the training that it accredits in any case.

One of the disadvantages of the new system is likely to be the public’s negative perception of a system that removes the minimum-hours requirement. The public may compare this laissez-faire attitude unfavourably with the standards imposed by other professional membership bodies, such as doctors, dentists and accountants. “Removing the simplicity of the existing CPD system might confuse the profession’s clients and thereby undermine trust in solicitors”, say McCann and Byrne.

There is also likely to be public concern over how the SRA proposes to keep the public safe from incompetence. Intervening after a solicitor has proved incompetent provides the public with little comfort. It also does nothing to improve the service from solicitors who may be delivering incompetent services due to lack of up-to-date knowledge, but whose clients have not yet seen fit to complain to the SRA.

The SRA’s response to these concerns is that an hours-based CPD requirement does not guarantee that clients will receive an appropriate standard of service, and may even create a false impression that undertaking the minimum requirement ensures that a solicitor remains competent. In any event, it is self-evident that good solicitors will keep themselves up-to-date with legal developments, and poor ones will not.

In practice, the bigger risk is that firms and individuals will spend less on training. Where profit margins are under pressure or there is a pressing need to invest in something else to keep the business afloat, it will be even easier than before to move money across from the training budget. However, McCann and Byrne caution that “firms that move their focus away from rigorous development, such as in formalised programmes, in our view, risk not only their lawyers’ competence, but also their clients’ satisfaction and, ultimately, the firm’s reputation.”

There is also the risk that established practitioners, with busy professional lives, will not know where the gaps in their knowledge lie. Or less experienced solicitors may overreact, engaging in far more than is necessary, just to be absolutely sure of having enough evidence to satisfy the SRA, should it have reason to intervene. This will have a downside in terms of cost and time.

While recognising the potential for some senior solicitors to feel that they do not need to complete any formalised legal training, according to McCann and Byrne, “it is much more likely that they will welcome the fact that the new regime recognises the experience they have and enables them to align their development to business-critical priorities rather than forcing an arbitrary 16-hours a year requirement on them. It is highly unlikely that a senior practitioner will wish to risk his reputation, either within the firm or with his clients, by not keeping up-to-date”.

The SRA deals with both extremes of concern by saying that the SRA Handbook will encourage solicitors to take a responsible attitude to their own training and development and that of their employees. The SRA intends to support that with guidance, to be published in spring 2015, on ways to achieve training targets, the process of reflection and logging of training undertaken, and examples of good practice.