Lawyer feedback sought on mandatory professional development

MEDIA RELEASE – For immediate use, 3 February 2012

Lawyer feedback sought on mandatory professional development scheme

The New Zealand Law Society has released details of a proposed scheme which would require all New Zealand lawyers to complete a minimum of 10 hours of professional development annually.

The Law Society is seeking comments from the legal profession on a discussion paper on the proposals.

The proposed mandatory Continuing Professional Development (CPD) scheme would apply to all lawyers who hold a practising certificate. They would be required to prepare and update an annual CPD plan and complete, record, document and justify a minimum of 10 hours of eligible CPD activities each year.

Activities which would be eligible include participation in a wide range of conferences, seminars and training programmes, delivered line, online or via a video or teleconference.

As well as the structured learning, lawyers would be encouraged to complete and plan for at least 50 hours of non-verifiable self-study a year.

Providers of professional development events would not need to be licensed or approved, but courses would need to be of a sufficient standard to be eligible under the CPD scheme.

The scheme has been approved by the Law Society’s Board, which believes there is widespread support for such a programme.

The Law Society’s Executive Director, Christine Grice, said today that the proposal was the culmination of detailed research and consultation into an appropriate way of ensuring New Zealand’s lawyers developed and maintained high levels of professional competency.

“Up until now there has been no specific requirement for lawyers to undertake continuing legal education,” she said.

“However, we are very confident that many lawyers are already far exceeding the minimum standards which our proposed CPD would require. A survey of the profession in 2010 showed that 30% of respondents were completing over 21 hours of structured legal education a year, and 44% were completing over 21 hours of unstructured legal education annually.”

Ms Grice said the survey also showed that 72% of responding lawyers had identified their continuing education needs and researched appropriate courses and seminars to meet these.

“This shows that the majority of New Zealand lawyers are already taking a responsible approach to ensuring they stay up with the latest trends and developments in the law and related legal practice matters,” she said.

The Law Society is asking lawyers to provide comments on the proposed scheme by 13 April 2012.

Discussion paper: A copy of the discussion paper is available at http://www.lawsociety.org.nz/home/for_lawyers/regulatory/continuing_professional_development

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