The Law Society’s CPD Scheme Booklet 2022 (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 2023 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 2023, C will be the number 20; and secondly, to calculate your reduced minimum Management CPD you must do, C will be the number 3.

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 2023 CPD cycle, and how many of these must be Management & Regulatory?

Answer – s/he must do 7 hours CPD for 2023, of which at least 1 must be Management and at least 2 must be Regulatory, calculated as follows:

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

C = 20 when calculating the overall number of CPD points for 2023, and in our example this results in the 2023 annual requirement being reduced to 8 hours. Note: if the precise calculation is not a full number, e.g. 7.2, it is then rounded to the nearest 0.5 point, and 7 is that nearest 0.5 hour/point (i.e. if it were 7.3 it would be rounded down to 7.5)…..

and C = 3 when calculating the minimum number of Management CPD, and in our example this results in the 2023 minimum Management CPD requirement being reduced to 1 hour, i.e. the precise calculation is 1.2 which is  then rounded to the nearest 0.5 hour/point, and 1 is that nearest (i.e. if it were 1.3 it would be rounded up to 1.5).

Remember that this formula isn’t applied to the 2 or 3 hours minimum Regulatory CPD, which must be done in full.