The Regulations provide that a ‘CPD credit of up to a maximum of 50% of the minimum CPD requirement may be claimed for time spent writing a relevant article or section of a legal periodical or textbook that is published (in printed form or online)’.

For “articles to qualify for CPD, the subject matter should be more than a basic statement of the law in a particular area, and should involve some legal analysis and development of a legal issue“. Excluded are posts on your firm website, newspaper and/or magazine articles, advice/‘Q&A’ articles or columns, or online ‘blogs’.

So, “Writing relevant material that is published” is the second way of completing your minimum CPD requirement. The maximum CPD credit you can claim for 2024 for the time spent writing is 12.5 hours. There is a maximum limit of seven hours of CPD within a single (24 hours) day that may be claimed as a credit for fulfilling the minimum CPD requirement. And only periods of writing of at least 30 continuous minutes may be counted.

Again, the subject matter of the published material will determine its relevance and whether it constitutes General CPD, Client Care & Professional Standards CPD, or Professional Development & Solicitor Wellbeing CPD, and you must be able to produce the published material to the Law Society as verification if requested.

As with all CPD, the hours engaged in this activity must form part of your CPD record, to be produced if requested by the Society to do so together with a copy of the published material.