Tuff: Stronger evidence of competence
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) should not impose an “overly burdensome and arbitrary” annual requirement on law firms to hold three-hour ethics discussions for their solicitors, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) has said.
APIL said the sessions could be “very costly” and argued instead for solicitors to certify that they had taken part in ethics discussions when renewing their PCs.
The SRA launched proposals for a beefed-up continuing competence regime in April, and in their responses, Birmingham Law Society warned that compulsory three-hour ethics discussions could cost the profession £100m every year and the national Law Society noted that one large law firm had calculated lost productivity at £1.2m.
APIL said its members reported that they already undertook annual ethics discussions within their firms, which could be face-to-face with new starters, an annual hourly discussion or e-learning activity, including a test at the end.
“Rather than requiring discussions to be rigidly within the SRA’s proposed framework, we would suggest that members should be able to certify that they have undertaken ethics discussions within their firm – in whatever form their firm deems appropriate – as part of their declaration when renewing their practising certificate.
“The SRA should provide general guidance on the format and agenda for ethics discussions, for those who do not already undertake such discussions, but there should not be prescriptive requirements on the form they should take.”
Questioning the need for three hours of discussions, it went on: “Unlike the content of personal injury law itself, which is constantly changing and of which there is a need to remain abreast of any changes, what is ‘ethical’ behaviour is fairly static and it is unlikely to substantially change year on year – it is likely that three hours each year will mean that discussions quickly become repetitive.
“If the SRA becomes aware of a new/novel ethical issue or development that requires further focus and discussion, they could communicate the need for firms to discuss this internally via guidance or a warning notice.”
APIL supported mandatory record-keeping of learning and development for solicitors and welcomed the flexibility of the proposal in that existing approaches used by firms and individuals, for example the APIL accreditation scheme, could be maintained.
APIL agreed in principle that, if the SRA had “a genuine competence concern”, it should be able to require “some or all solicitors to complete specific learning and development on the competence issue”.
“We stress that this must however be used proportionately, to avoid it being overly onerous, and there need to be careful checks and balances in place.”
Matthew Tuff, immediate past president of APIL, said the plans for much more detailed training records, demonstrating how solicitors have identified and reached their learning and development goals, would provide “much stronger evidence that solicitors have reached the level of competency that their clients need and deserve”.
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