Training in 2025 – gearing up to meet continuing competence expectations

Judging from some of the reports and guides that were published by the SRA towards the end of last year, the coming year looks set to be the year in which the SRA get serious about continuing competence, and training in particular.  The SRA would probably claim that they have always been serious about continuing competence, but that has not always been in evidence in their dealings with firms over the years. Be that as it may, many firms are going to need to pay more attention to the competence of all staff, and devote more time and resources to training programmes and verifiable competency monitoring, if they are to avoid SRA enforcement action.

Introduction

The SRA abolished CPD hours in November 2016.  Since then a regime has been in place in which all solicitors and registered European lawyers are required to declare that they have an up to date understanding of the legal, ethical and regulatory obligations relevant to their role.  This includes certifying that they have reflected upon their role, identified any learning and development needs that they may have and addressed those needs.  The self-certification forms part of the annual practising certificate and registration renewals.

The difficulty with a system such as this is that it does not set any specific targets against which competence can be measured.  It is therefore difficult for development needs to be evaluated and actions to address those needs devised.  Demonstrating that this has taken place has also proved an issue for many – made more uncertain by the SRA’s guidance which states that it is not a regulatory requirement that solicitors keep a written record, but that they should be able to prove that they are maintaining their competence if required to do so.

Solicitors that have not done this, or firms that have submitted applications for practising certificates without first checking the extent to which this has been done, are increasingly likely to find themselves in difficulties. Various firms have, over the past few months, been contacted by the SRA in connection with the training their staff have received, particularly in relation to landlord and tenant law and family law.  Inevitably this has caused a certain amount of panic amongst those who may not have paid sufficient attention to training or whose records of such training are inadequate.

It should be borne in mind that not only can the SRA restrict a solicitor’s practise if they have concerns about competence, but also if the declaration can be shown to have been made dishonestly or without being able to be backed up by evidence that continuing competence has been addressed, then this could also become a conduct issue.

Thematic Reviews and Inspections

The issue of training and competence has come to the fore following the publication of a number of thematic reviews by the SRA and following the announcement by the SRA that it would be focussing on assessments of firms that undertake Landlord and Tenant Law or Family Law work.

Assessments

So far as the latter is concerned, the SRA’s “Annual assessment of continuing competence 2024” identified Family Law and Landlord and Tenant Law as areas where they wanted to explore in more detail if and how solicitors practising in those areas were maintaining their competence.  In particular they wished to address the issue of solicitors focusing their learning and development only on maintaining technical legal knowledge rather than addressing wider issues of competence and an understanding of regulatory and client care issues.

The annual assessment revealed that there had been a 25% increase in the number of reports received about Family Law solicitors. Of those, a third of the reports that related to a lack of competence referred also to the solicitor’s lack of knowledge of family law, or to processes and mistakes as to the application of the law to a client’s matter.  The figures for Landlord and Tenant were even higher. Here, there had been a 49% increase in the total number of reports received with just over half referring to the solicitors lack of knowledge of the law and process.

The annual assessment stated that the SRA would be taking a number of steps to address these issues.  These included:

Thematic Reviews

The SRA have also undertaken a number of thematic reviews over the past few months. The three key ones from the perspective of training, however, have been:

Prior to these, and prior to the annual assessment referred to earlier, a thematic review of asylum legal services was undertaken which revealed that most of the firms visited by the SRA “generally understood their obligations to make sure their fee earners are staying up to date with their continuing competence obligations” and that they found “no competence-related issues of concern”.  Despite this the SRA still concluded that there was “room for improvement, particularly in relation to recording why learning and development is required.”

The common theme in all of these reviews is the need for solicitors not only to take seriously the requirement to keep up to date both with the law, legal practice and methods for dealing with clients, but also to ensure that they kept records that demonstrated that they had thought about the training they needed beforehand and analysed the extent to which the training they had undertaken had effectively addressed any shortcomings identified.

The review in relation to AML is particularly detailed both in terms of its findings and recommendations and is accompanied by an AML training checklist.  Infolegal has addressed the issue of AML training in a Guidance Note that is available to Infolegal subscribers.

The review of probate and estate administration concluded that “some solicitors and firms are failing to meet their continuing competence requirements” and that as a consequence the SRA would be “reviewing how we can further improve our current continuing competence regulation”.  As a result of this exercise some firms are being contacted by the SRA and asked to provide “sufficient assurance they are maintaining their competence” and the SRA is “considering the need for further action, for example, whether we need to introduce guidance to contextualise what competence looks like for solicitors practising in this area” and monitoring “reports we receive about probate advice to identify any competence-related themes and risks”.

Finally, the “Professional Obligations Thematic Review” reported that whilst many firms were able to produce a training record to the SRA, “there was a significant lack of regulatory knowledge which was exacerbated by a failure by some firms to review our free regulatory resources”.  The cynical might comment that this could be because there are now so many of them that they have to choose between reading SRA materials and providing an adequate service to clients!

The review went on to state that “There is a general lack of systemised reflection about our requirements and dissemination of our resources by both firms and individuals. Firms often rely on ad-hoc and undocumented means of dissemination, while individuals and firms failed to acknowledge regulatory training”.  It would appear from the report that many firms are relying on the COLP to review and understand regulatory risk with individuals not taking personal responsibility for maintaining awareness and compliance with the SRA’s expectations.  The report states that typically, fee earners were less likely to record regulatory training and did not appear to consider it to be ‘proper’ training.  Fee earners typically said they received regulatory training during team meetings, one to ones and online research but that it was not routinely recorded in their training records.

The findings of this report very much backed up what was said in the SRA’s “Annual assessment of continuing competence 2024”. This found that a  there was a general lack of awareness and application of professional obligations.  Also, the SRA’s warning notices and guidance were not being taken into account sufficiently with some solicitors “failing to regularly reflect on their professional obligations and ethical competence when considering how they maintain their competence”.

What do firms need to do?

Given the clear intention of the SRA to pursue issues of training and competence over the coming year, and given the obvious willingness exhibited by the SRA to fine and sanction anyone deemed not to be compliant, it is clear that all firms must manage the training process more effectively.  This must be in relation to competence within the areas of work that they undertake, in relation to AML training where the firm comes within the scope of the MLR 2017 and especially in relation to the general regulatory and other compliance issues to which solicitors are subject.

So far as competence in their chosen area of work is concerned, it is worth bearing in mind that the continuing competence framework does not mandate formal training sessions – whether at training events and conferences or using online training courses.  The SRA specifically states that solicitors can plan and address their training needs based on their preferred learning style, the nature of their practice, their professional goals and the requirements or opportunities of their employer where relevant.  Therefore, a variety of training methods can be adopted including self-study (e.g. of newsletters, law journals and blogs), attending training events, completing a secondment to a different department or practice area, mentoring, observing others, group meetings and taking part in development initiatives.   What is essential, however, in all cases, is that the individual should have identified areas for improvement, undertaken activities to address any shortcomings and, importantly, recorded what they have done and how it has addressed those shortcomings.

In particular, firms must address in a comprehensive manner issues relating to AML training – if only because this will inevitably come up as an issue if the firm is subject to an AML inspection. As mentioned earlier, this has been dealt with in a separate AML Training Guidance Note, but the key takeaways are that any training must be:

• relevant and tailored to the firm,
• cover the risks identified in the firmwide AML risk assessment,
• deal with the firm’s own policies, controls and procedures,
• address individual gaps in knowledge,
• be provided to all relevant personnel on a regular basis (probably annually at least),
• address any needs of those in high-risk roles – e.g. additional training for the MLRO/MLCO, and
• recorded

How Infolegal can assist

At Infolegal, we have always placed the importance of adequate training and compliance competence at a high level.  Our training courses are proving increasingly popular with all subscribers and the Learning Management System (LMS) through which they operate is providing those firms that undertake training with comprehensive records as to who has undertaken which training course, when it was completed and how they have performed in any related tests.  This is then displayed alongside records of the training and competence activities undertaken by other means.  Members have access to all of the standard training courses as part of their subscription meaning that all staff can easily be trained in relation to compliance, AML, cybersecurity and data protection issues.

In addition, Infolegal is now undertaking a review and update of all of its training courses and the methods by which they are delivered.  Using up-to-date online resources we are now able to ensure that all courses can be kept up-to-date easily and effectively, and that they deliver not just basic training in the form of videos, but that they are backed up with references and resources to other information and learning materials.  Courses can even be personalised to the needs of individual firms – something which is becoming increasingly important in relation to, for example, AML training – and delivered to those firms from within the general training LMS.

Moreover, firms that have their own training materials can create their own courses, visible only to them, where those courses rely on YouTube and Vimeo videos or where the information is contained in PDF documents.  They can even create their own quizzes to find out who has engaged with the materials.

In the area of AML training, not only are we producing overview courses covering the key issues in general terms but also we are producing shorter, more targeted training courses addressing the various topics identified in the SRA AML Training Checklist. These include CDD, EDD, ongoing monitoring, SARs, tipping off, source of funds/wealth, sanctions and proliferation financing, to name but a few.

To find out more, please contact Infolegal at enquiries@infolegal.co.uk and we will be more than happy to provide you with further information.