CPD points for lawyers

Where can I find the continuing professional development (CPD) requirements applicable to Australian lawyers?

Continuing professional development (CPD) or continuing legal education (CLE) requirements are set out in the Legal Profession Uniform Continuing Professional Development (Solicitors) Rules 2015 for solicitors and the Legal Profession Uniform Continuing Professional Development (Barristers) Rules 2015 for barristers.

These rules apply to Australian lawyers in jurisdictions which have enacted legislation to reflect the Uniform Law (as at February 2023; Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia).

For more on the requirements for lawyers practicing in each Australian state and territory, check out the Jurisdiction Guides included beneath this FAQ.

What mandatory CPD requirements apply to Australian lawyers?

The requirements applicable to Australian lawyers differ depending on which state a lawyer is practicing (and whether the practitioner is qualified to practice as a solicitor or barrister).

However, as a general rule Australian lawyers are required to complete ten (10) CPD units each year. Within those ten (10) units Australian lawyers practicing as solicitors in Uniform Law states must include at least one (1) CPD unit every CLE year in each of the following compulsory categories:

1. Ethics and professional responsibility
2. Practice management and business skills
3. Professional skills
4. Substantive law

Australian lawyers who practice as barristers in Uniform Law states must obtain a minimum of one (1) CPD unit from each of the following categories:

1.   Ethics and Professional Responsibility
2.   Practice Management and Business Skills
3.   Substantive Law, Practice and Procedure, and Evidence
4.   Barristers’ Skills

For those requirements applicable to Australian lawyers’ CPD in non-Uniform Law states, see the Jurisdiction Guides for South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and the territories.

In what timeframe can Australian lawyers complete their mandatory 10 CPD units?

The CPD year doesn’t run according to the calendar year.

Instead, Australian lawyers are required to complete their mandatory CPD between 1 April to 31 March of the following year. Recency requirements for recorded CPD are in place in some jurisdictions such as WA.

How are lawyers’ CPDs assessed?

The continuing professional development scheme in most Australian states is based on self-assessment.

As an Australian lawyer, you need to be satisfied that the activity claimed extends your knowledge and skills in areas that are relevant to your practice needs or professional development.

At the end of each Hearsay episode we make a suggestion where each episode belongs, but practitioners can choose where to claim the point.

Are there any restrictions on claiming points through Hearsay the Legal Podcast?

In Uniform Law states, no! If you want to, you can claim all of your points through Hearsay the Legal Podcast! We have specifically designed Hearsay as the all-encompassing, flexible CPD solution to enable Australian lawyers to claim all of their CPD points from the one service.

As a general rule, lawyers can claim up to five CPD points in a year from audio-only material but check each jurisdiction for their individual requirements.

To claim further CPD points from Hearsay content, you must also interact with additional material on the Hearsay episode pages. This includes reading the additional summary materials and references in the show notes and completing e-learning modules that let you test your knowledge of the content you’ve just listened to. Each episode includes this material so you can pick and choose which additional content most interests you.

This means that Australian lawyers can rely on Hearsay to meet CPD requirements, flexibly in their own time, whether they are at their desk, at home, or on their commute or their lunch break. Hearsay allows you to be CPD compliant with your eyes closed!

How do Hearsay’s e-learning modules work?

Listening to the podcasts is only half the fun! Once you have listened to the audio, you can engage with the episode material and then test your knowledge using our e-learning modules. This is a crucial step for lawyers who want to claim all of their CPD points through Hearsay.

The e-learning modules – AKA quizzes – consist of 10 questions about the episode you have just listened to. The quizzes enable you as the user to better engage with the content and complete the e-learning modules in the same way you listen to the podcast – on the go and from your smartphone.

How you choose to complete the quiz module is entirely up to you!  There are also animations, infographics, summaries and transcripts to help you with your understanding of the episode content and the quiz.

Why should I sign up?

Sign up to Hearsay the Legal Podcast for complete access to all episodes. Enjoy the flexibility of completing your CPD requirements at a time convenient to you, on the devices you use the most.

Hearsay will keep an electronic record of your continuing professional development activities so that you can keep track of how you are progressing toward satisfying CPD requirements each year. That record can also be used if you are audited by the Law Society.

WA has some additional requirements for providers of CPD such as Hearsay. You can find out about those in the WA jurisdiction guide.

If you’re not ready to sign up just yet, you can check out the Hearsay: Sidebar for free. The Hearsay: Sidebar is a fun, free podcast where the Hearsay team gets together around the microphone to talk about the legal side of what’s in the news.

Does Hearsay track my progress?

It sure does. Hearsay ensures CPD compliance by tracking the episodes and modules you have completed, whilst also keeping track of the episodes you are part-way through. All of this information can be tracked in your user account.

Uniform Law States (Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia)

The aim of the Uniform Law was the harmonisation of the regulations covering the legal profession in Australia. Making it easier for lawyers to understand interstate practice. Luckily for us, this includes the harmonisation of CPD requirements for Australian lawyers practicing in these jurisdictions!

If you have questions about CPD in these three jurisdictions, the source of truth is either of the Legal Profession Uniform Continuing Professional Development (Solicitors) Rules 2015 for solicitors and the Legal Profession Uniform Continuing Professional Development (Barristers) Rules 2015 for barristers.

As provided by rule 6.1 in the Solicitors Rules, Australian lawyers practicing as solicitors must obtain 10 CPD points per year from each of the following categories:

1. Ethics and professional responsibility
2. Practice management and business skills
3. Professional skills
4. Substantive law

Likewise, for Australian lawyers practicing as barristers, the requirements are found in rule 9.1 of the Barristers’ Rules:

1. Ethics and professional responsibility
2. Practice management and business skills
3. Substantive law, practice and procedure, and evidence
4. Barristers’ skills

For the most part, many of Hearsay’s CPD episodes will qualify under one or another of the categories above. In some special cases, episodes will be flagged as professional skills for solicitors and barristers’ skills for barristers (for example, CPD focused on advocacy).

For barristers practicing in a Uniform Law state, rule 10 of the Barrister’s Rules specifies that, if “the person or organisation who conducts a CPD activity has assigned a particular CPD activity to one or more of the categories identified, a barrister who participates in that CPD activity may not assign CPD points in respect of that activity to any other category”.

Special requirements apply in WA. Hearsay the Legal Podcast is a registered QA provider of CPD for legal practitioners based in Western Australia. WA lawyers should keep an eye on the recency of Hearsay materials that they want to claim as CPD.

In order to qualify as a CPD activity in WA, a legal practitioner must have assessed the material as relevant to their immediate or long term practice within the last 12 months. Hearsay will keep a record and submit that record to the LPBWA of WA practitioners who have used the service. So remember to let us know if you’re practicing or have moved to WA!

South Australia

Unlike in the Uniform Law states, the Legal Practitioners Act 1981 (SA) provides the requirements for legal professionals practicing in South Australia.

South Australian lawyers who practice as solicitors must complete a unit in a new category of bullying, discrimination, and harassment.

So, for practitioners in SA, in mandatory CPD terms this means that South Australian lawyers are required to complete ten (10) hours of continuing professional development each year with the further CLE study covering a minimum of one (1) unit in each of the following categories:

1. Practical legal ethics
2. Practice management or business skills
3. Professional skills
4. Bullying, discrimination, and harassment

These requirements align neatly with the Uniform Law states, with the addition of bullying, discrimination, and harassment in place of substantive law. Practitioners in SA can browse the Hearsay episode page website under the Uniform Law categories and assign the episodes to whichever relevant. The requirements for SA barristers are the same four categories above.

South Australian lawyers practicing as solicitors can use Hearsay to collect a maximum of 5 points of their mandatory CPD units. South Australian lawyers practicing as barristers may also claim a maximum of 5 CPD points on the Hearsay platform – the other 5 CPD units for barristers must be comprised of “SA Bar-Sponsored CPD”.

More information for South Australian practitioners can be found on the website of the South Australian Law Society (solicitors) or the South Australian Bar Association (barristers).

Queensland

Queensland’s legal practitioners qualified as solicitors can find the requirements for legal CPD activities in the state in the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld) and Queensland Law Society Administration Rule 2005 (Qld).

These require that Queensland solicitor legal practitioners undertake ten (10) CPD units with a minimum of one (1) unit from the following categories:

1. Practical legal ethics
2. Practice management and business skills
3. Professional skills

Queensland legal practitioners working as barristers are also required to undertake ten (10) CPD units with a minimum of one (1) unit in each of the following categories:

1. Ethics and professional responsibility
2. Practice management and business skills
3. Substantive law, practice and procedure and evidence
4. Barristers’ skills

The rules applicable to Queensland barristers can be found in the LPA 2007 and the Administration Rules of the Bar Association of Queensland.

Barristers in Queensland may credit a maximum of 3 CPD units to materials on the Hearsay website, while solicitors may credit the full 10 CLE units to Hearsay materials.

Tasmania

The CPD rules for Tasmanian lawyers can be found within the Law Society of Tasmania’s Practice Guideline No. 4. Tasmanian lawyers practicing as solicitors must earn ten (10) CPD points per CPD year. At least one (1) CPD point must come from each of the following compulsory fields:

1.     Practical legal ethics
2.     Practice management and business skills
3.     Professionals skills
4.     Substantive law
5.     Equality and wellbeing

This last category – equality and wellbeing – includes training in responding to, for example, bullying and sexual harassment as well as things like developing and maintining mental health.

Likewise for barristers, Australian lawyers practicing solely as barristers in Tasmania need a compulsory unit in each of:

1.     Practical legal ethics
2.     Professionals skills
3.     Substantive law
4.     Equality and wellbeing

Australian lawyers practicing as barristers in Tasmania are not required to complete a CPD unit in practice management and business skills, however, any study forming part of a professional skills CPD unit must be in “in advocacy, alternative dispute resolution, research skills and other skills related to a barrister’s work”. In essence, the same category as barristers’ skills in a Uniform Law state.

Australian Capital Territory

Australian lawyers practicing in the ACT are similarly required to obtain ten (10) compulsory CPD units. Like with Uniform Law states, this continuing education is required to fall within the following categories for solicitors:

1. Legal ethics and professional responsibility
2. Practice management and business skills
3. Professional skills
4. Substantive law and procedural law

One (1) CPD unit must be completed in each category with no limits placed on how many units can be obtained through participation in online materials. These requirements can be found in the ACT Law Society’s CPD Guidelines: A continuing professional development scheme for Canberra’s legal practitioners.

For barristers practicing in the ACT the requirements for CPD can be found in the Continuing Professional Development Program Protocol which specifies the following requirements:

1. Ethics and regulation of the profession
2. Management
3. Substantive law, practice and procedure and evidence
4. Advocacy, mediation, and other barristers’ skill

Northern Territory

The CPD requirements for Australian lawyers practicing in the Northern Territory are identical regardless of whether you practice as a solicitor or barrister. They can be found in Schedule 2 of the Legal Profession Regulations 2007 (NT) and the Legal Profession Amendment Regulations 2012 (NT).

Practitioners must obtain ten (10) CPD points including a minimum of one (1) in each of the three core competencies, and substantive law. The three core competencies are found the LPAR 2012 and are as follows:

1. Professional ethics and responsibility
2. Practice management and business skills
3. Professional skills in legal practice

The LPR 2007 specify at cl 4(2)(b) of Schedule 2 that these are to be accompanied by a mandatory unit in:

1. Substantive law