Australian Lawyer CPD: The Four-Field Rule Is Not National

Every summary of Australian lawyer CPD recites the same four fields: ethics and professional responsibility, practice management and business skills, professional skills, and substantive law. That list is correct in three states and wrong in two.

Queensland has three compulsory areas and no substantive law requirement at all. South Australia has four, but its fourth is bullying, discrimination and harassment — not substantive law. If you are tracking CPD across state borders, that is a compliance error waiting to happen.

What is genuinely uniform

Two things, and they are worth knowing because they are the only two you can safely assume.

Ten units a year. Verified in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.

The CPD year runs 1 April to 31 March. The same in all five. The Uniform CPD Rules define it directly: "CPD year means the year beginning on 1 April and ending on 31 March the following year."

Where the fields diverge

South Australia appears to be the only Australian jurisdiction with a standalone mandatory bullying, discrimination and harassment unit. It is not a variation on the ethics unit — it sits beside it.

The Uniform CPD Rules are the source of the four-field model where it applies: "a solicitor must complete 10 CPD units in each CPD year including at least one CPD unit in each of the following fields."

The Uniform Law now covers three jurisdictions, not two

New South Wales and Victoria are the ones everyone names. Western Australia joined on 1 July 2022 — the Legal Practice Board of WA confirms that "On 1 July 2022, Western Australia entered into the Uniform Law Scheme."

The Law Council's own page on the Uniform Law still describes it as enacted in Victoria and adopted by New South Wales in early 2014, with no mention of WA. If you are relying on secondary summaries, that is the kind of staleness to watch for.

And "harmonised" needs qualifying. The rule text is identical and binding across the three — ten units, the same four fields, the same CPD year, records kept "for at least three years after the end of the CPD year." But Western Australia layers on two obligations the rules do not impose in New South Wales or Victoria, which is the next section.

Western Australia requires your provider to be approved. The others do not.

This is the single most consequential practical difference, and it cuts both ways.

New South Wales is explicit that it does not accredit: "CPD activities are not accredited by the Law Society", and "CPD is based on self-assessment of educational activities." Victoria requires the presenter to be suitably qualified rather than the provider to be approved.

Western Australia is the opposite: "In Western Australia CPD activities must be approved by the Board or delivered by a provider approved by the Board (QA provider)." Activities "can only be included once you have received approval from the Board", and the fee for approval forms is $60.

So the same course, same presenter, same content, counts automatically in New South Wales and not at all in Western Australia until someone pays $60 and gets it approved.

Carry-forward only works in January to March

All five states that address it restrict carry-forward to units earned in the final quarter, and the caps differ:

• NSW: maximum 3 units, January to March only
• Western Australia: maximum 3 units, January to March, for solicitors only — barristers cannot carry forward at all
• Queensland: January to March units may count in either year, but not both
• South Australia: excess January to March units, at the practitioner's election
• Victoria: not addressed in the material we could read

Reporting is a declaration, except where it is not

New South Wales and Victoria take a declaration at practising certificate renewal. Queensland encourages recording through its member portal. Western Australia has the provider upload to a central system.

South Australia is the outlier worth knowing: a statutory declaration is required only if you are non-compliant, by 14 April. That is an unusual design — the filing obligation is triggered by failure rather than by compliance.

On audit, New South Wales is the most specific: you must "provide your CPD records and evidence in support of your record within twenty one (21) days of our request." South Australia requires production within 14 days. Victoria's route for shortfalls is to include any exemptions or a rectification plan with renewal.

Pro-rating for new admissions

New South Wales and Queensland both scale down through the year: ten units if you start in April, one if you start in January, and none for February or March starts. Victoria pro-rates for the period you held a practising certificate.

Two caveats we will not paper over

First, Queensland's figures come from the Law Society's resource pages rather than the binding rule, which we could not read. And the Queensland page contradicts itself on accredited specialists — the body text says ten units must be in your area of accreditation while its own FAQ says at least five. Do not rely on either figure for a specialist.

Second, we found no primary-source evidence of any announced CPD change in these five states for 2026 or 2027. A Victorian CPD review report exists but we could not retrieve it, so treat "no changes coming" as unverified rather than established.

Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory are not covered here. We verified five states precisely in preference to asserting all eight.

Working across jurisdictions

If you administer CPD for a firm with offices in more than one state, build to the strictest applicable rule per practitioner rather than to a national template — which in practice means Western Australia's approved-provider requirement and five interactive units, South Australia's bullying and harassment unit, and the knowledge that Queensland's substantive law hours are optional rather than mandatory.

The same fragmentation governs Canadian lawyers on an entirely different model — see our guide to Canadian lawyer CPD across six provinces, where one province requires no hours at all. For the position in England and Wales, where prescribed hours were abandoned altogether, see the SRA's continuing competence regime. And for the US, where there is no national accreditation route for providers at all, see why there is no national CLE accreditation.