Hong Kong Solicitors CPD: 15 Points, Pre-Approved Accreditation and the 15 December Deadline

Hong Kong's CPD scheme has a feature no other regime in this library shares: a hard date six weeks after the year ends on which an unmet requirement becomes a practising certificate problem. It also refuses to accredit anything retrospectively, pays double for presenting, and gives no credit at all for reading.

This guide works through the Law Society of Hong Kong's CPD requirements and its Guidelines for compliance issued under sections 2 and 5(3) of the CPD Rules.

Fifteen points, 1 November to 31 October

The requirement is that "a solicitor or a trainee solicitor must accumulate 15 CPD points in each CPD practice year", and a CPD practice year is "a period of 12 months commencing on 1 November and ending on 31 October the following year".

Trainee solicitors carry a second, cumulative obligation: 30 CPD points by the end of the period of employment as a trainee solicitor, pro-rated under the Society's Tables A and A1. Solicitor-mediators must additionally obtain at least 20 points in mediation training out of the annual requirement, counted across the four CPD years before panel renewal.

The scheme has applied to all trainee solicitors and all solicitors with practising certificates since 1 January 2003.

Accreditation must come first — there is no fixing it afterwards

Guideline 3 is the provision to brief anyone who books training: "all applications for CPD accreditation must be made before the date on which the course is held. It is not possible to accredit CPD points after a course has taken place."

A limited set of guidelines operate as exceptions, and overseas courses have a narrow escape hatch — Guideline 6(e) permits retrospective accreditation of an overseas course only in "exceptional circumstances", applied for within 30 days after the course. Overseas courses must also be in approved jurisdictions and the provider is subject to approval by the CPD Committee.

There is one standing allowance: under Guideline 10.1, up to 3 of the 15 points may be claimed without an accreditation application at all.

How points are counted

Guideline 4.8 accredits points "corresponding to the number of hour(s) of tuition scheduled, excluding tea, coffee, lunch and other breaks", and only full or half points may be accredited. Guideline 10.4 states the general rule as one point per hour.

Two refinements are worth knowing:

• Workshops earn 25% more. Guideline 4.9 adds a quarter where "at least 1/3 of the tuition time is spent in such small group work"
• Short courses can earn a half point. Guideline 4.11(a) makes a course of 30 to under 60 minutes eligible for half a point, provided at least 80% is lecture presentation. Otherwise Guideline 4.10 sets a one-hour minimum

What counts, with the caps

The Guidelines set a cap per activity type, and most of them are generous — 15 points, meaning the entire annual requirement:

• Live webinars — no cap at all (Guideline 5.1), subject to the conditions in 5.2 and 5.3
• Multimedia, audio-visual, audio or visual courses — up to 15 points (5.4), but must be real-time and interactive (5.5)
• Recorded online courses accredited by the Society — up to 15 points (7.2), with a printed completion certificate required (7.4)
• Distance learning — up to 15 points where it involves an examination or written assignment, or leads to a recognised qualification (8.2)
• Part-time law courses — up to 15 points (9.2)
• Writing law books or articles — up to 15 points (11.1), claimed in the year of publication (11.2), though the Society may allow a pre-publication claim where the publisher has approved publication for the following year (11.3). The journal must be approved by the Society (11.4)
• Legal research producing a precedent, practice note or other written guidance of use beyond the particular case — up to 15 points, subject to approval (12.1)
• A dissertation counting toward a recognised qualification — up to 15 points, at 1 point per 1,000 words in English or Chinese (13.2)
• Preparing oral or written material for approved training courses — up to 15 points, whether or not you present it (14.1)
• Presenting or facilitating approved training courses — up to 15 points, and twice the actual time may be counted (14.3)
• Council, committee and working party work — up to 7 points (15.1), at one point per hour and half a point for more than half an hour but under an hour (15.2)

The exclusion to note is Guideline 5.6: "Reading and reviewing cases or articles does not qualify for CPD points." That is a sharper line than Scotland's five-hour private study allowance or Australia's narrow audio-visual carve-out — in Hong Kong, keeping up with the law on your own earns nothing.

The double credit for presenting in 14.3, combined with the separate 15-point cap for preparation in 14.1, makes training delivery the most efficient way to accumulate points in this scheme by a wide margin.

Carry-over: ten points, or fifteen

Practitioners may carry over "a maximum of 10 CPD points accumulated in excess of the CPD requirement in one CPD practice year to the next immediately succeeding CPD practice year only".

That rises to 15 points for a practitioner who has completed all requisite modules of the Risk Management Education core courses for principals under rule 6 of the RME Rules. And of the carried points, a maximum of 3 obtained from RME electives may satisfy the following year's RME elective requirement.

Trainees get no benefit on admission: excess trainee points "cannot be carried over to the CPD practice year in which a trainee solicitor has been admitted as a solicitor".

The 15 December cliff edge

This is the part that distinguishes Hong Kong. The points deadline is 31 October, the end of the practice year. But the Council "may refuse to issue a practising certificate to a solicitor who fails to acquire the necessary CPD point(s) by 15 December" under section 6(5)(d) of the Legal Practitioners Ordinance — and renewals where the points were gained by 15 December are "processed in the usual way".

So there is an effective six-week grace period after the year ends, and a firm date on which it closes. On a General Audit, absent acceptable mitigating factors, a solicitor who lacked the points "shall, unless the outstanding CPD point(s) was subsequently acquired by a deadline specified by the Society, be subject to suspension or cancellation of their current practising certificate".

Beyond the certificate, the Council treats breaches of the CPD requirement as professional misconduct. Serious cases go to a Disciplinary Tribunal, whose sanctions include a fine, censure, suspension or striking off, and cancellation or suspension of a trainee solicitor contract.

Records, declaration and audit

Practitioners must keep their CPD training record for 2 CPD practice years after the period to which it relates, and records supporting carried-over points must be kept too.

Compliance is declared at renewal: a solicitor is required, when applying to renew the practising certificate — usually in November — to make a statement of compliance for the preceding CPD practice year. Trainees declare on the Form 4 application for a certificate of eligibility for admission.

The Society "may conduct random checks", may request sight of a practitioner's training record at any time, and may require the practitioner to attend the Society in person.

Exemption is for the very senior; suspension is for everyone else

The two routes are distinct and often confused.

Exemption is narrow. It is considered case by case "only where exceptional circumstances exist", and the criteria are 40 or more years in practice, or being over 70 years old, plus an undertaking not to be in active practice and to notify any change. Applications go to the Assistant Director, Professional Development.

Suspension is the practical route. It is available to a solicitor holding a current practising certificate who is not in practice — unemployed, on maternity leave, or not required to act as a solicitor — or who is practising outside Hong Kong, or absent through long-term illness. Trainees can apply where employed outside Hong Kong or absent through long-term illness.

The minimum period is not shorter than 70 days, continuous, and the Society may require a statutory declaration. Critically, a practitioner who does not apply "may be required to meet the CPD requirement in full for that period" — the suspension is not automatic and cannot be claimed after the fact. Return-to-work requirements are pro-rated under Tables C, D and E.

One sensible clarification: the CPD Rules apply only to trainees and to solicitors holding a current practising certificate, so a solicitor without a certificate need not apply for suspension at all.

Starting out, and starting late

Points can be claimed for activities undertaken between lodging a current admission application and three months after the date of admission, if entered in the training record. Points earned after those three months but before the first practising certificate takes effect do not count.

Where a certificate starts late in the year, the requirement is pro-rated under Table B by reference to "the commencement date of the period of practice stated in their practising certificate, not the issue date" — running from the full 15 points for a start between 1 and 15 November down to nil for a start between 1 September and 31 October.

Three things to check

First, that nobody is booking unaccredited training expecting to claim it later. Guideline 3 forecloses that, and only the 3-point deemed allowance and the 30-day overseas exception survive it.

Second, whether anyone has been told their reading counts. Guideline 5.6 says it does not.

Third, that any absence of 70 days or more has an application behind it, not an assumption. Without one, the full requirement stands for that period.

Against Singapore's seniority-banded escalation, Hong Kong is flat at 15 points for everyone but far stricter on how points are earned. For the financial services licensing side of the same market, see our guide to the HKSI licensing examinations, and for structured development, our CPD programmes.

Sources and limits: written from the Law Society of Hong Kong's Mandatory CPD Requirements, Guidelines for compliance, Monitoring Compliance, Failure to Comply, Exemption and Suspension pages, read in October 2026. The Society's CPD Rules page is blocked to automated access and its March 2022 CPD Information Package PDF would not load, so the Rules' full official title and version date are unconfirmed; Tables A, A1, B, C, D and E, the RME Rules, the Mandatory Practice Management Course and the mandatory subject requirements were not read. Guidelines 16 to 22, covering examining, assessing and coaching, are not set out here. General information about a published regime, not legal advice.