Law Society of Ireland CPD Requirements: The 25-Hour Cycle Explained

Solicitors in Ireland work under a very different continuing professional development system to their counterparts in England and Wales. Where the SRA has moved away from fixed hours entirely, the Law Society of Ireland still runs a defined annual hours requirement — and one with specific rules about how those hours must be earned. If you're a solicitor in Ireland, or you manage training for a firm with Irish-qualified staff, getting the structure of the 25-hour cycle right matters more than it might first appear.

The headline requirement: 25 hours a year

Under the Law Society of Ireland's CPD Scheme, a full-time practising solicitor must complete 25 hours of CPD in each annual cycle. That's a materially higher bar than many other professional CPD schemes, and it isn't a single undifferentiated pool of hours — specific categories must be covered within it.

The categories within the 25 hours

At least 5 hours must be dedicated to professional development and solicitor wellbeing. At least 3 hours must cover client care and professional standards. These aren't optional extras layered on top of the 25-hour total; they're carved out of it, which means a solicitor can't satisfy the full requirement purely with technical legal update courses in their own practice area, however useful those are.

There's a further layer for solicitors in particular roles. Sole practitioners, compliance partners, and those holding AML-related responsibilities at their firm must include at least 1 hour of accounting and AML compliance training within their overall CPD hours. Given how central AML compliance is to a firm's regulatory risk, this isn't a box worth leaving until the last week of the cycle.

The rule that catches people out: the 80/20 split

This is the detail that trips up firms that have built their training around a single online subscription. The Law Society of Ireland requires that at least 5 hours — 20% of the total — be completed as group study undertaken in person. A maximum of 20 hours, or 80%, can be satisfied through e-learning.

In practice, this means a purely online CPD subscription cannot, on its own, satisfy the annual requirement for a standard full-time solicitor, no matter how many hours of content it contains. Firms need to build in genuine in-person group study — whether that's attending seminars, in-house training sessions delivered live, conference attendance, or other formats that meet the "group study, in person" definition — alongside their online learning. Training plans that ignore this split will leave solicitors short at declaration time regardless of how much e-learning they've logged.

How this compares to other jurisdictions

The contrast with England and Wales is instructive. The SRA has no fixed hours requirement at all and instead asks solicitors to reflect on competence and evidence relevant learning. The Bar Standards Board takes a middle path — fixed hours for new practitioners, then an outcomes-based approach once established. Ireland's 25-hour cycle, with its category minimums and in-person requirement, sits at the more prescriptive end of that spectrum. For firms operating across both jurisdictions, it's worth building separate training plans rather than assuming one CPD programme design will satisfy both regulators — a course that fully meets SRA expectations around competence-mapping won't automatically tick the Law Society of Ireland's category and format requirements.

Building a compliant CPD plan

A practical approach for Irish firms is to map the cycle at the start of the year rather than after the fact. Block out the 5 hours of professional development and wellbeing and the 3 hours of client care and professional standards as fixed, non-negotiable line items, add the AML/accounting hour for anyone in a relevant role, and then plan the remaining hours as a mix that keeps at least a quarter of the total in genuine in-person or live group settings — comfortably clearing the 20% in-person minimum even allowing for a session or two falling through. Leaving the in-person component to be arranged reactively near the cycle deadline tends to be where firms run into availability problems, since seminar and conference dates are fixed well in advance.

It's also worth remembering that the CPD Scheme exists to support real competence, not just paperwork. Solicitors who choose their remaining hours based on where their practice genuinely needs development — a particular area of litigation procedure, a technical update relevant to their caseload — get more out of the cycle than those who default to whatever's most convenient to book.

How many CPD hours do Irish solicitors need each year?

Full-time practising solicitors in Ireland must complete 25 hours of CPD per annual cycle under the Law Society of Ireland's CPD Scheme, including specific minimum hours in defined categories.

Can I complete all my CPD hours online?

No. A maximum of 20 hours (80%) may be completed through e-learning. At least 5 hours (20%) must be group study undertaken in person, so an online-only subscription cannot satisfy the full annual requirement on its own.

Do all solicitors need AML-specific CPD hours?

Sole practitioners, compliance partners, and those with AML-related responsibilities at their firm must include at least 1 hour of accounting and AML compliance training within their overall CPD hours. Other solicitors aren't subject to this specific carve-out but should still maintain relevant AML awareness.

What happens if a solicitor doesn't meet the client care and professional standards minimum?

The 3-hour client care and professional standards minimum is a distinct category requirement within the 25-hour total, not an optional extra — solicitors need to plan for it specifically rather than assuming general CPD activity will cover it by default.

The 25-hour cycle rewards planning. Firms that map categories, book in-person sessions early, and treat the AML and client care minimums as fixed commitments tend to reach the end of the cycle with a clean, straightforward declaration — rather than a late scramble to find qualifying hours.