A question of competency

In July, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) published its Annual assessment of continuing competence 2025. The findings mirrored those of the 2023 and 2024 reports; specifically, that “most solicitors keep their knowledge and skills up to date”, and “most firms have effective systems and controls in place”.

However, the SRA also found – again – that there were “weaknesses in how some solicitors and firms maintain their competence and deliver competent legal services”.

Areas of weakness

The previous year’s report found that some solicitors lacked awareness of their professional obligations and risks relating to their area of practice. Despite SRA warning notices and guidance, there were those who failed to:

• reflect regularly on their professional obligations
• consider their ethical competence, and
• carry out regular learning and development focused on maintaining their competence.

As a result, the SRA amended the declaration for the 2024/25 practising certificate renewal exercise to include the additional wording: “You have an up-to-date understanding of the legal, ethical and regulatory obligations relevant to your role.”

In its 2025 report, the SRA said that it had continued to identify “wider shortcomings in how some solicitors approach their obligation to maintain their competence”, and “consistent challenges” in terms of solicitors:

• not putting aside time to reflect, or not reflecting on all aspects of their practice
• focusing on their technical legal knowledge and ignoring other areas of their practice that might be necessary to maintaining their competence
• not carrying out learning and development to understand, develop and uphold their ethical and professional duties.

Why is it important?

Why is it important for firms and solicitors to know about the 2025 report – or indeed, any of the SRA’s annual competence reports? There are two reasons:

1. Unsurprisingly, the SRA states in the 2025 report that: “solicitors and firms should consider whether the challenges identified are relevant to them and, if so, take steps to address them.” Specifically, the SRA intends to strengthen its approach to training record reviews “to understand if solicitors have incorporated warning notices and guidance into their learning and development”. In addition, a firm’s compliance officer for legal practice (COLP) needs to be aware that the SRA regards COLPs as playing “a key role in disseminating our resources, warning notices and guidance”.
2. It’s clear, even though continuing competence was introduced in 2018, that there is still considerable confusion among solicitors and their firms as to what continuing competence requires. A frequent question is: “Am I compliant?” The simple answer to this is another question: “Are you competent?” Only if you are competent in the service you provide to your clients are you compliant with continuing competence.

Current requirements vs CPD scheme

Solicitors and firms that were used to the previous continuing professional development (CPD) scheme often look for what replaced the CPD regulations, when in reality, there isn’t anything. Continuing competence now refers to a solicitor’s obligations under paragraph 3 of the Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs, REFs and RSFs (the solicitors’ code), and a firm’s obligations to ensure its partners and employees are competent under paragraph 4 of the Code of Conduct for Firms.

Instead of undertaking 16 hours of CPD, as required by the old system, a solicitor has to make a declaration when they renew their practising certificate that they have reflected and addressed their learning and development needs, and have kept their professional knowledge and skills, as well as their understanding of their legal, ethical and regulatory obligations, up to date.

By replacing the old CPD scheme with continuing competence, the SRA acknowledged that many firms already had robust systems in place to ensure their lawyers remained capable and up to date. Instead of prescribing a fixed programme of courses, continuing competence gives firms and solicitors the freedom to identify their own learning priorities and pursue the activities that best suit their practice.

Professional competence has never hinged on logging just 16 hours of CPD. The reality is that firms have always had a range of means and measures to ensure that their lawyers are competent for the roles they perform. They have maintained this competence by way of inductions, training programmes, on-the-job learning with supervision and feedback, and performance appraisals, to name just a few. Unless a firm does none of these things, it should not have an issue with competence.

However, there might be room for improvement; firms could look at other measures that could be implemented, or any processes that could be improved, to ensure continuing competence.

From CPD to continuing competence

Continuing competence didn’t eliminate bureaucracy – every solicitor must now maintain a detailed reflection log. Under this framework, they need to track:

• their identified learning and development needs
• the activities they’ve undertaken to meet those needs, and
• an honest evaluation of each activity’s effectiveness.

This record proves they’ve fulfilled their obligations under the solicitors’ code and that they have made the declaration with honesty and integrity.

The requirement for documented evidence – and the admin that comes with it – is what drives much of the anxiety for solicitors. Firms face the same pressure under the Code of Conduct for Firms: every partner and employee, whether a solicitor or not, must be demonstrably competent in their role.

In practice, that means a firm must have up-to-date documentation ready to hand over to the SRA, showing exactly how it assesses, records and assures the competence of its people.

Understanding what evidence both solicitors and firms need to be able to provide can make navigating continuing competence difficult. It involves the more obvious questions of understanding how to:

• reflect on the training requirements
• measure competence effectively
• identify and address learning and development needs
• establish what keeping up to date should involve, and
• evaluate the effectiveness of learning and development.

There are also management considerations for firms, such as how to conduct bulk practising certificate renewals and what to do in relation to the non-solicitor managers and employees in the firm (such as registered European lawyers, foreign lawyers and Swiss lawyers), as well as other non-solicitor managers and employees. These are all matters that firms need to be able to address.

What’s next?

Following the latest continuing competence report, additional changes may be afoot that will increase some of the regulatory requirements. The SRA said in its 2025 report: “We know there are wider shortcomings in how some solicitors maintain their competence. The consistency with which we find these issues suggests our current approach is not driving the learning and development behaviours we expect to see for some solicitors. This means some are failing to meet their continuing competence requirements.”

The SRA is intending to consult “on proposals to strengthen our continuing competence requirements. These will look to further embed and drive the learning and development behaviours we expect to see.” This may include making maintaining a training record a regulatory requirement – so watch this space.