Ensure new colleagues are welcomed and supported through the crucial onboarding phase
Ensure that your teams have easy access to product knowledge, wherever they are
Pro-actively maintain high levels of compliance to achieve a competitive edge in highly regulated industries
Every year, at practising certificate renewal, solicitors declare that they've kept their understanding of their legal, ethical and regulatory obligations current, addressed any learning needs they identified, and are competent to do their job. Firms carry a parallel duty under the Code of Conduct for Firms to make sure their managers and employees do the same.
This was, by the SRA's own description, the most significant proposed change to how solicitors evidence their competence since mandatory CPD hours were abolished in 2016. Whatever the SRA ultimately decides, the direction of travel is clear: more evidence required.
The SRA wants solicitors to practise working through a difficult ethical judgement call, not simply read about one. That's a worthwhile goal. The question is whether a scheduled, three-hour, in-person group session is the best way to get there. There's a strong case for a complementary approach, made possible by new technology for learning: AI-driven ethical decision-making scenarios, delivered through an LMS, that a solicitor works through individually, at their own pace and in their own time.
