🚨‼️🔔 CLLS Training Committee ALERT FOR LAW FIRM HR, L&D AND COMPLIANCE PROFESSIONALS (AND ENGLAND AND WALES SOLICITORS): THE Solicitors Regulation Authority HAS CHANGED THE WORDING OF THE CONTINUING COMPETENCE REGULATION DECLARATION. 🚨‼️🔔 The SRA’s latest update (issue 129) says: “Practising certificate and registration renewals will take place from 1 to 31 October 2024. This year, there are no new questions in the renewal application. However, we have reworded the continuing competence declaration to make it even clearer what we expect from you. We have written to your organisational contact and authorised signatory to explain more, and provided information on our website.” 📝 On the SRA website, it says that solicitors will be asked to confirm that: ✅ they have an up-to-date understanding of the legal, ethical and regulatory obligations relevant to their role AND ✅ they have reflected on and addressed any identified learning and development needs AND ✅ they are competent to perform their role. 💻 ⚠️ If your firm uses bulk renewal, you will need to update your LMS or whatever internal process you use to confirm that your lawyers have made the declaration. ⁉️CLLS Training Committee is very interested to hear how employing organisations are adjusting to comply with this change! ❓Drop a comment below.
Thanks for sharing this more widely! Clare Wooldridge flagged it late last week as she'd spotted it in the SRA update newsletter. We will need to make adjustments to our declaration for bulk renewal purposes. My research thus far has not turned up any SRA comms to our organisational contacts about this despite what it says in the update, which seems odd as it's a relatively big change, something that all E&W solicitors will be expected to sign to, later this year.
So important - this change is not immediately obvious and has implications for employers and their solicitors. Worth taking note.
Reflecting on these changes now as we are soon to start a new CCR year - and I very much agree with Emma's comments about the new expectations. I've been hunting for further guidance/direction from the SRA but have not found any. Has anyone else had any luck, or are we all interpreting the declaration requirements independently?
Thank you for sharing
Thanks for sharing
Director of Risk & Compliance | MLRO | Solicitor | Office of General Counsel | Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP | Member of the Law Society's Economic Crime Task Force | Trustee of Law Care |
4moIt seems to me that this will extend far beyond the bulk renewal certification and will require a new (and rather urgent in the case of this year) approach to training and education vis-a-vis ethics and legal regulation in a way that simply was not there. This is long overdue and I have been lamenting the lack of SRA minimum requirement for this for some time but this seems a rather back door way to implement/bring about mandatory ethics training...