Law Society of Scotland CPD Requirements: 20 Hours, Verifiable Criteria and the Risk Management Hour

Scotland runs its own legal profession, its own regulator and its own CPD regime, and none of it maps onto the SRA's. A firm with offices on both sides of the border, or an employer whose compliance calendar was built around England and Wales, will find that almost every number is different.

This guide sets out the Law Society of Scotland's requirement as the Society publishes it, section by section, for solicitors holding a Scottish practising certificate and the people who plan their training.

The annual requirement: 20 hours, with three conditions

All solicitors holding a practising certificate under the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1980 must complete a minimum of 20 hours of CPD in each practice year. Within that 20:

• a minimum of 15 hours must meet the criteria for verifiable CPD
• a minimum of one hour must be risk management CPD
• up to five hours may be by private study

The risk management hour sits inside the 20 rather than on top of it, and it may be met by private study, by verifiable CPD, or by a combination.

One point that catches employers out: the requirement is not reduced for solicitors working part-time. A three-day-a-week solicitor owes the same 20 hours as a full-time colleague.

Solicitor Advocates carry an additional specific obligation: 10 hours of mandatory Solicitor Advocate CPD, counted as part of the minimum 15 verifiable hours.

What makes CPD "verifiable"

The Society sets four criteria. The activity must have clear aims and outcomes relevant to the solicitor's professional development; provide interaction and/or the opportunity for feedback; be able to be evidenced; and not be part of the solicitor's daily work.

Two readings worth having. First, feedback does not have to be given — the Society's FAQ confirms that having the option suffices. Second, that fourth criterion is the one that disqualifies most of what practitioners instinctively count. Doing the job well, however much you learn from it, is not CPD.

A recording of an event you missed does count as verifiable CPD. Forwarding that recording to a colleague does not count for them, because there is no record of their having registered.

Presenting and writing

Delivering training counts, and generously: preparation time counts up to a maximum of four hours, on top of the hours actually presented. Repeat deliveries of the same material do not count again — only the time taken to deliver the first presentation.

Writing is treated separately and more favourably than most CPD schemes allow. A solicitor who writes a relevant book, or an article in a periodical, provided it is published, may claim up to ten verifiable hours of the 20 for that practice year. That is half the annual requirement from a single published article, and it is the most under-used provision in the scheme.

Private study: what it is and what it is capped at

Private study means reading relevant periodicals, journals and books, and no more than five hours per annum can count. So the reading most solicitors do anyway can cover a quarter of the requirement and no more.

The risk management hour

The Society defines risk management as "a process of identifying, assessing and prioritising risks, which results in some form of action to control and manage those risks" — note that an activity has to result in action, not merely awareness.

For solicitors in private practice, the Society's published topics include anti-money laundering, complaints handling and complaints avoidance, client communication, business continuity planning, cybersecurity, equality and diversity, organisational culture including the prevention of bullying and harassment and the promotion of wellbeing, prioritisation and time management and workflow, and terms of business.

For in-house solicitors the list is different and is worth quoting to anyone who has been told the regime does not fit their role: sector-specific regulatory or compliance obligations, health and safety standards, protection of intellectual property rights, privilege, company secretarial matters, and professional ethics.

A caution on sourcing. The Society's combined guidance document and its web page carry slightly different topic lists — the guidance includes client communication, business continuity planning, equality and diversity and organisational culture, where the web page lists contingency planning instead. Check the current version before relying on either list for a training plan.

Three duties, not one

The hours are only part of it. Solicitors are required to plan their annual CPD at the start of each practice year, to record what they undertake including hours above the minimum, and to reflect upon that activity and be able to evidence the reflection.

The planning duty is the one most often skipped, and the Society is explicit that planning should take account of the individual solicitor's learning needs rather than focusing unduly on exact activities on specific dates. The reflection duty means an hours total alone is not a compliant record.

The Members' login area is encouraged for all three, but a manual record suffices, including confirmation emails, receipts, invoices and joining instructions.

Monitoring: a five per cent annual sample

Records are not routinely submitted. Solicitors are expected to keep an accurate and up-to-date record and to produce it on request. The Society then "will study in detail a sample of a minimum of five per cent of solicitors on an annual basis to ensure compliance".

A five per cent sample means a solicitor can reasonably expect to be looked at roughly once every twenty years — which is precisely why records tend to be reconstructed rather than kept. The sanction ladder is graduated: where requirements are not met and no exemption applies, the solicitor is first given more time to comply, then required to provide independent proof of their CPD, and continued failure "may be referred to the Practising Certificate SubCommittee of the Society for consideration as professional misconduct".

On the content of CPD, the Society takes a notably light-touch position: it would not seek to second-guess a solicitor's professional judgement "unless the decision reached is so unreasonable that no other competent or reputable solicitor would come to the same conclusion".

Exemptions, reductions and waivers

Three circumstances produce a formal pro-rata reduction: long-term illness with absence from work of ten weeks or more for the same illness in a practice year; maternity, paternity or adoption leave; and returning to practice during the practice year.

The calculation is specific — divide the number of weeks worked by 2.6 and round up to the nearest whole number. The Society's own worked example: a solicitor working 37 to 39 weeks in a practice year owes 15 hours in total. Both the verifiable and private study elements reduce pro rata.

Separately, a solicitor may apply for a waiver, and the Society names redundancy and retirement among the circumstances it may consider, expressly not as a closed list.

Parental leave other than maternity, paternity or adoption is not mentioned in the published guidance, nor is a career break in the CPD context. The guidance also applies the pro-rata reduction to verifiable CPD and private study without saying whether the one-hour risk management element reduces with it.

Trainees and the newly admitted

Trainees must complete a minimum of 60 hours of CPD across the two-year training contract, of which 40 must be specialised trainee CPD (TCPD) taken with an authorised provider; the remaining 20 may be regular CPD.

A trainee who is admitted during a practice year and holds a restricted practising certificate is not required to undertake any CPD until the start of the practice year following the date their training contract ends. That is a genuine grace period and a useful planning point for firms recruiting newly qualified solicitors.

Double training relief

Training completed to satisfy another obligation can count as verifiable CPD if it can be evidenced. The Society names the Practice Management Course under Rule D.2.2, Extended Rights of Audience under Rule C.4, the 15 hours a year required of accredited family law mediators, and — the broadest limb — CPD undertaken for another professional or regulatory body where it is relevant to the solicitor's development as a solicitor.

That last point matters to dual-qualified practitioners and to solicitors in regulated businesses who already carry a second CPD obligation. It is not automatic relief; it is relief available where the training is relevant and evidenced.

One thing the Society does not publish

The CPD guidance, the requirements page and the FAQs all use the term "practice year" without stating its start and end dates. If you are building a compliance calendar, confirm the dates with the Society directly rather than assuming they match the SRA's or the Irish cycle — our guides to the SRA's continuing competence regime and the Law Society of Ireland's 25-hour cycle set out two regimes that look superficially similar and work entirely differently.

For firms building a programme that satisfies more than one of these at once, structured CPD programmes are the practical route, provided the verifiable criteria above are met rather than assumed.

Sources and limits: written from the Law Society of Scotland's CPD Requirements and Guidance (combined document, last updated 1 November 2024), its CPD requirements page, its CPD FAQs and its risk management CPD page, all read in October 2026. The Society's separate CPD regulations document was not read. This is general information about a published regime, not legal advice; confirm any specific obligation with the Society.