The SRA replaced the prescriptive CPD regime — 16 hours of accredited training per year — with a continuing competence framework in November 2016. The shift represented a significant change in philosophy: from a compliance exercise that solicitors could satisfy by attending a box-ticking seminar, to a genuine expectation that solicitors would take responsibility for identifying and addressing their own development needs.

Nine years on, some solicitors have embraced the new framework as a more meaningful approach to professional development. Others — and this is a persistent finding in SRA thematic reviews — have treated the removal of the 16-hour target as a reason to do less, not as an invitation to engage more thoughtfully.

The SRA’s competence requirements are enforceable and are taken seriously in fitness to practise proceedings. This guide sets out exactly what the framework requires, what counts as valid competence activity, and how to demonstrate compliance if the SRA ever asks.

The Legal Basis: What the SRA Actually Requires

The Threshold Standard

The SRA has published a Statement of Solicitor Competence that sets out the skills and knowledge a competent solicitor is expected to demonstrate. The Statement organises competence into four main areas:

Ethics, professionalism and judgment
Technical legal practice (understanding and applying law; drafting; advocacy; dispute resolution)
Working with other people (communication, client care, working in a legal environment)
Managing themselves and their own work (legal research, time management, financial matters)

The Statement is not a syllabus — it is a framework for thinking about what competence means across the range of a solicitor’s professional activities. Every solicitor’s competence obligations are calibrated to their individual practice area, seniority, and role.

The Annual Declaration

Every solicitor must, when renewing their practising certificate, confirm that they have met their continuing competence obligations. This is not a declaration that they have completed 16 hours of training — it is a declaration that they have reflected on their competence, identified development needs, taken appropriate steps to address those needs, and can demonstrate that to the SRA if required.

The declaration is a personal one. Signing it falsely — declaring that you have taken steps to maintain competence when you have done nothing — is potentially a dishonesty finding under Principle 4 of the SRA Principles.

The SRA’s Guidance on What Is Expected

The SRA has published guidance notes on the continuing competence framework that clarify what it expects. Key points include:

There is no minimum number of hours required
The activity must be appropriate to the solicitor’s individual needs
A range of different types of activity can count — not just formal training
Solicitors must keep a record of their learning activities and reflections
The record must be kept for three years and produced to the SRA on request

The Learning Cycle: Reflect, Plan, Act, Evaluate

The SRA’s continuing competence framework is built around a learning cycle:

Reflect: assess your current competence against the demands of your role. Where are the gaps? Where has your practice area changed, or where are you doing work that stretches the edge of your existing knowledge? Have there been near-misses, client complaints, or matters where you felt uncertain?

Plan: identify how you will address the development needs you have identified. What activities will close the gap? Are there new regulatory requirements you need to understand? Are there technical areas where your knowledge is less current than it should be?

Act: carry out the planned activities.

Evaluate: review whether the activities have addressed the development needs. Do you now feel more competent in the areas you identified? Are there further steps needed?

This cycle is the framework against which the SRA will assess compliance if it reviews your continuing competence record. A solicitor who can produce a thoughtful reflection on their development needs, a coherent plan for addressing them, and a record of activities undertaken will satisfy the SRA. A solicitor who has done nothing — or who has attended a handful of seminars without any structured reflection — will not.

What Counts as a Valid Learning Activity?

The SRA’s flexibility on this point is genuine. Valid continuing competence activities include:

Formal Training

Attending legal training courses, seminars, or conferences
Completing online legal training modules
Attending webinars
Undertaking a formal qualification, such as an LLM or specialist accreditation
Advocacy training or moot court exercises

Formal training activities should be recorded with the date, the provider, the topic, and an assessment of how the training addressed the development need identified.

Self-Directed Learning

Reading legal journals, textbooks, or law reports
Researching a specific legal issue in depth
Reviewing new legislation or statutory guidance
Reading regulatory updates from the SRA, the Law Society, or specialist bodies

Self-directed learning is as valid as formal training — in some cases more so, because it is directly targeted at identified development needs rather than a generic curriculum. The key is to record what you read, when, and what you learned.

Experiential Learning

Taking on work in a new area under appropriate supervision
Attending a court hearing or arbitration in a practice area you are developing
Shadowing a colleague with different expertise
Participating in a working group addressing a legal or regulatory issue

Experiential learning is often the most powerful form of development, because it combines knowledge acquisition with immediate practical application. It requires more careful recording — the SRA needs to see not just that you did the activity, but what development need it addressed and what you learned.

Peer Learning and Mentoring

Participating in structured peer review of work
Mentoring or being mentored by a more experienced solicitor
Knowledge-sharing sessions with colleagues

Peer learning should be distinguished from general office conversations: to count as a competence activity, it needs to be structured around a specific development objective.

Writing and Teaching

Writing articles, practice notes, or client guidance on legal topics
Delivering training to colleagues or clients
Contributing to a legal textbook or updating a precedent library

Producing legal content requires you to engage deeply with the subject matter and maintain current knowledge. It is a legitimate and often high-value continuing competence activity.

Keeping Your Competence Record

Why the Record Matters

The competence record is your evidence. If the SRA asks you to demonstrate that you have met your continuing competence obligations — either in the context of a firm review, a fitness to practise concern, or an individual enquiry — the record is what you produce.

Many solicitors treat the record as a burden — something they update retrospectively every year before their practising certificate renewal. This is a mistake. A retrospective record is often thin, inaccurate, and unconvincing. A record maintained in real time — noting what you did, when, and what you learned — is far more credible.

What the Record Should Include

A good competence record includes, for each activity:

The date
The type of activity (course, reading, experiential learning, etc.)
The provider or source (if applicable)
The development need it addressed
A brief reflection on what you learned and how it applies to your practice

The reflection element is important. The SRA’s framework is not about accumulating a list of activities — it is about genuine professional development. A record that shows you attended six seminars without any reflection on their relevance to your practice will not satisfy a rigorous SRA review.

How Long to Keep the Record

The SRA expects records to be retained for three years. Given that learning activities may be relevant to a fitness to practise concern arising from work conducted years later, many practitioners keep records for longer.

Practice Area-Specific Requirements

Certain practice areas have additional competence requirements over and above the general continuing competence framework.

Criminal Practice

Solicitors undertaking publicly funded criminal work must comply with the Criminal Litigation Accreditation Scheme (CLAS) requirements under the LAA Standard Contract. These include specific training and accreditation requirements for duty solicitor work, Crown Court work, and youth court representation.

Family Law

The Resolution accreditation scheme, while voluntary, is recognised by the SRA as good practice for family law solicitors. The Law Society’s Family Law Accreditation scheme has similar status. Accredited specialists are expected to maintain competence to the standard required by their accreditation.

Immigration

The OISC (Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner) oversees immigration advisers who are not solicitors, but solicitors doing immigration work must ensure their knowledge of an exceptionally rapidly-changing area remains current. Immigration law has undergone fundamental changes almost annually, and a solicitor who has not engaged in active competence-building in this area risks providing advice that is simply wrong.

Conveyancing

The Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) accreditation requires firms to demonstrate current competence in residential conveyancing, including through documented training. SRA-accredited CQS firms are subject to periodic CQS review as well as SRA oversight.

Common Failures and How the SRA Identifies Them

Identifying Competence Concerns in Practice

The SRA most frequently identifies competence concerns through:

Client complaints: a pattern of complaints suggesting poor quality legal work, failure to explain advice, or errors in technical legal work
Negligence claims: insurance claims or civil proceedings arising from negligent legal advice
File reviews during firm visits: SRA officers reviewing matter files for quality of legal advice and supervision
Self-reports: firms reporting incidents where a solicitor’s work fell below the expected standard

Where the SRA identifies competence concerns, the response depends on the nature and severity. For less serious concerns, the SRA may suggest or require the solicitor to undertake specific training or address specific development needs. For more serious concerns — particularly where there is a pattern of failures — conditions on the practising certificate may be imposed, requiring supervised practice or restricting the scope of work the solicitor can undertake.

The Competence Defence to Disciplinary Proceedings

In some enforcement contexts, solicitors have argued that a failure arose from a competence gap rather than from dishonesty or deliberate misconduct. The SRA’s position is that a genuine competence failure — where the solicitor did not know what they should have done — may attract a more lenient response than deliberate wrongdoing, but does not eliminate liability. A solicitor who takes on work beyond their competence without seeking supervision or declining the instruction is in breach of the SRA Standards and Regulations regardless of whether they intended to cause harm.

Building a Sustainable Competence Culture

For Individual Solicitors

The most effective approach to continuing competence is to integrate it into your regular professional practice rather than treating it as a periodic exercise. This means:

Spending 15-20 minutes at the end of a matter reflecting on any competence issues it raised
Reading at least one substantial legal update per week relevant to your practice area
Attending at least one substantive training event per quarter
Having a development conversation with a supervisor or mentor at least once a year

For Firms

Firms have obligations under the Code of Conduct for Firms to ensure that fee earners are competent to undertake the work they are assigned. This means more than providing a training catalogue — it means having structured induction programmes, ongoing supervision, regular performance conversations that address development needs, and a system for identifying and responding to competence concerns early.

The most effective compliance programmes treat continuing competence not as a regulatory requirement but as a commercial necessity: clients are better served by competent solicitors, risks are reduced, and the firm’s reputation is strengthened.

Obiter supports solicitors in maintaining competence by handling the administrative layer of legal practice — drafting correspondence, recording time, managing matters — so that fee earners have the mental bandwidth to engage in genuine professional reflection and development. When the routine work is handled, the substantive work gets better. Find out how Obiter can help your firm at obiteros.com.

Continuing Competence for Solicitors: Meeting SRA Requirements