The Law Society’s CPD Scheme Booklet 2024 (click here to view) sets out the calculation of the reduced requirements, and a formula that you may wish to use to calculate the number of hours to which your annual mandatory requirement can be reduced is as follows:

A / 52 x C where:

A = calculate the proportion of 2024 you engaged in practice and convert it to whatever is the equivalent in full 5-day weeks (e.g. 2-days a week = 20.8 weeks)

C =  the mandatory minimum hours, e.g. firstly, to calculate your overall reduced total minimum for 2024, C will be the number 25; and secondly, to calculate your reduced minimum Professional Development & Solicitor Wellbeing CPD you must do, C will be the number 5.

Where the calculation of the reduced number of hours results in an uneven number of hours, the number is rounded up or down to the nearest 0.5 of an hour.

The following is an example of the application of this formula:

For a Solicitor who is employed part-time on a 2-day week, how many overall CPD hours must s/he do to comply with the 2024 CPD cycle, and how many of these must be Professional Development & Solicitor Wellbeing?

Answer – s/he must do 10 hours CPD for 2024, of which at least 2 must be Professional Development & Solicitor Wellbeing and at least 3 must be Client Care & Professional Standards, calculated as follows:

A = 20.8 weeks (i.e. 2 days per week translates to 20.8 full 5-day weeks)

C = 25 when calculating the overall number of CPD points for 2024, and in our example this results in the 2024 annual requirement being reduced to 10 hours. Note: if the precise calculation is not a full number, e.g. 8.2, it is then rounded to the nearest 0.5 point, and 8 is that nearest 0.5 hour/point (i.e. if it were 8.3 it would be rounded up to 8.5)…..

and C = 5 when calculating the minimum number of Professional Development & Solicitor Wellbeing CPD, and in our example this results in the 2024 minimum Professional Development & Solicitor Wellbeing CPD requirement being reduced to 2 hours.

Remember that this formula isn’t applied to the 3 hours minimum Client Care & Professional Standards CPD, which must be done in full by every solicitor regardless of status.