Continuing Professional Development Scheme
Continuing Professional Development Scheme

Continuing professional development (“CPD”) is the systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of relevant knowledge and skills to enable a professional to successfully carry out his professional duties and responsibilities throughout his career.
 
CPD provides a convenient framework for the profession to meet the changing demands of clients and society to continuously update knowledge and skills, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the profession and to enable some practitioners to redefine their careers by learning new professional skills and areas of practice.

The Law Society (“Society”) has taken into consideration the need for busy practitioners to comply with CPD requirements through other methods of learning than attendance at traditional lecture based courses. For example, conducting dissertations, writing legal articles and books, attending distance learning courses and preparing and presenting courses are treated as CPD activities.

The CPD Scheme is an honour-based CPD Scheme.

The CPD Practice Year

A CPD practice year is a period of 12 months commencing on 1 November and ending on 31 October the following year.

 

Related Information:

CPD Information Package
CPD/RME Training Records
CPD Rules
Accreditation of CPD Courses
Forthcoming CPD Courses
Course Evaluations
FAQs and Contact CPD



The CPD Requirements

For solicitors and trainee solicitors

The CPD Scheme has applied to all trainee solicitors and to all solicitors with practising certificates.

A solicitor or a trainee solicitor must accumulate 15 CPD points in each CPD practice year. Where a solicitor is issued with a practising certificate after the commencement of a CPD practice year, the annual 15 CPD points requirement will be pro-rated in accordance with Table B of the CPD Information Package.

However, a trainee solicitor must accumulate 30 CPD points by the end of his period of employment as a trainee solicitor and on a pro-rata basis in accordance with Table A and/or Table A1 of the CPD Information Package.

For solicitor-mediators

Solicitors who have been admitted to the Panel(s) of General and/or Family Mediators and/or Family Mediation Supervisors of the Society can maintain their membership on the Panel(s) for a period of 4 years from the date of their admission to the relevant Panel(s). Membership on the Panels can be renewed, subject to, amongst other things, the Panel Member demonstrating to the Society's Mediator and Parenting Coordinator Admission Committee that he has undertaken the relevant CPD points or has been exempted from the CPD requirement as set out below:

  (a) A total of at least 20 CPD points in mediation training out of the annual CPD requirement of the solicitor-mediator.
  (b) The 20 CPD points on mediation training obtained during the 4 CPD years prior to renewal shall exclude the CPD points obtained from training course(s) that fulfilled the training requirements in Stage 1 (General and Family) and Stage 3 (Family) of the requirements to be an Admitted Mediator.
  (c) Exemptions from the CPD requirement in mediation training may be granted by the Mediator and Parenting Coordinator Admission Committee on a case-by-case basis where exceptional circumstances exist and where it is fair and reasonable to do so.

Carrying over excess CPD point(s) from one CPD practice year to another

Practitioners will be permitted to 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.

As an exception to the CPD policy, a practitioner who has completed all requisite modules of the RME core courses for principals within the practice year specified under rule 6 of the Legal Practitioners (Risk Management Education) Rules (“RME Rules”) will be permitted to carry over a maximum of 15 CPD points accumulated in excess of the CPD requirement in one CPD practice year to the next immediately succeeding CPD practice year.

Accordingly, if a practitioner has attended other CPD activities in addition to all requisite modules of the RME core courses for principals in one CPD practice year, he is permitted to carry over up to a maximum of 15 CPD points he obtained during the CPD practice year to the next immediately succeeding CPD practice year.

Out of the CPD points permitted to be carried over to satisfy the CPD requirement in the succeeding practice year, a maximum of 3 CPD points obtained from completion of RME electives may be utilised to satisfy the RME elective requirement for that succeeding practice year.

However, any excess CPD points accumulated during employment under the trainee solicitor contract cannot be carried over to the CPD practice year in which a trainee solicitor has been admitted as a solicitor.