SRA Continuing Competence: What Solicitors Actually Have to Do

The SRA does not set a number of CPD hours for solicitors. It sets out steps you must take and a declaration you must sign, and the requirements above are expressed entirely in those terms — there is no minimum number of hours anywhere in them.

That is the single thing most often misunderstood about continuing competence, and it tends to produce one of two errors: treating the regime as optional because nothing is being counted, or buying a fixed number of training hours on the assumption that the old sixteen-hour rule still applies in another form. Neither is what the SRA asks for.

Who the requirements apply to

The SRA's continuing competence requirements apply to:

• solicitors who hold a practising certificate, including those working in-house
• solicitors exempt from holding a practising certificate under section 88 of the Solicitors Act 1974
• solicitors practising overseas whose practice predominantly relates to England and Wales, under rule 1.3 of the Overseas and Cross-border Practice Rules
• registered European, foreign and Swiss lawyers

The in-house inclusion is worth drawing out. Working in a company rather than a firm does not change the obligation, and the competence being maintained is competence in your actual role, which for an in-house lawyer may look very different from private practice.

The five steps

The SRA expects a cycle rather than a course. Its five steps are:

• Reflect — regularly consider the quality of your practice across all aspects of your role, not only technical legal knowledge. The SRA specifically includes working with others, including clients, and your ethical and professional obligations, including awareness and application of any warning notices and guidance it has issued that are relevant to your work.
• Identify — use that reflection to identify your learning and development needs.
• Plan and address — keep a plan, updated regularly, for how you will meet those needs.
• Record — maintain an up-to-date record of your learning and development activity. If you use your own format rather than the SRA's template, it must include how you identified your needs.
• Evaluate — consider whether the learning was actually effective.

Two of these carry more weight than they first appear. The requirement to record how you identified your needs means a bare list of courses attended does not satisfy the regime. And the instruction to reflect on warning notices and guidance means the SRA's own published material forms part of what you are expected to keep current on.

What you declare at renewal

As part of annual certificate renewals, a solicitor who holds or intends to hold a practising certificate, and registered European and Swiss lawyers, must declare that they:

• have an up-to-date understanding of the legal, ethical and regulatory obligations relevant to their role
• have reflected on and addressed any identified learning and development needs
• are competent to perform their role

The SRA asks you to satisfy yourself, before declaring, that you are acting honestly and with integrity in making it, that you have addressed identified needs, and that you are competent in all aspects of your role, not just technical legal practice.

Registered foreign lawyers sit slightly differently. They must maintain their competence but are not required to make the declaration. They should report to the SRA if they do not maintain it.

This is enforceable, and it is checked

Two points make continuing competence more than a box-tick.

First, the SRA regularly asks solicitors to provide evidence of how they are maintaining competence, including how they identified their learning and development needs. The record is not purely for your own benefit.

Second, the SRA can restrict your practice if it has concerns about your competence based on the information you provide when making the declaration. The declaration is a regulatory statement made honestly and with integrity, not an administrative step in a renewal form.

What firms have to do

The obligation is not only individual. Under the Code of Conduct for Firms, every firm the SRA regulates must make sure its solicitors and registered lawyers are competent to carry out their role. Sole practices are included.

In practice that means a firm cannot treat competence as something each fee earner sorts out privately. Supervision, file review and appraisal are where most firms evidence this, and our guide to effective supervision in legal practice covers what the SRA expects of that.

Building a record that would survive being asked for

A defensible record answers four questions: what you reflected on, what need that identified, what you did about it, and whether it worked. The SRA publishes templates for recording activity and for reflecting, prioritising and evaluating needs.

The most common weakness is a record that starts at step three. A list of webinars attended shows activity but not reasoning, and reasoning is the part the SRA asks to see.

It also helps to read competence broadly. The requirement covers ethics, working with other people, and managing your own work, so development in those areas belongs in the record alongside black-letter law. Areas such as professional ethics, conflicts and client care and working with vulnerable clients are squarely within scope, not adjacent to it.

Specialist practice areas

The SRA publishes additional competence resources for solicitors practising criminal or civil advocacy, in the coroners' courts, and in the youth court. If you work in any of those, the general requirements are a floor rather than the whole obligation.

The practical position

There is no hours target to hit and no approved-provider list to buy from. What there is instead is an annual declaration you make personally, a record the regulator can ask to see, and a firm-level duty that sits alongside your own. The regime asks for judgement about your own practice rather than attendance, which is harder to fake and harder to outsource.