Continuing Professional Development Scheme
Continuing Professional Development Scheme

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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



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.