Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

Week 3 Blog Post – BSBLED503 Maintain and Enhance Professional Practice

There are many professional industries that require Continuing Professional Development (CPD) such as lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers and accountants. Each industry has different CPD requirements to complete in order to maintain and ensure their knowledge is relevant in their profession.

According to Queensland Law Society, ‘practitioners are required to complete a minimum of 10 CPD points each year to maintain their practising certificate, stay up to date with legislative changes and the evolution of the ‘business of law’ in their practices.’ Queensland practitioners must earn a minimum of 1 legal CPD unit in each of Practical Legal Ethics, Practice Management and Business Skills and Professional Skills.

The CPD points can be obtained by ‘attending seminars and conferences, preparing for presenting at seminars or conferences, viewing on-demand recordings of conferences or seminars, publishing articles in law journals and other legal publications such as Proctor or becoming a member of a Queensland Law Society (QLS) section or committee.’

According to Law CPD, ‘under the Law Society QLD continuing legal education scheme, practitioners must maintain a record of their legal CLE activities.’ These records can be randomly audited to ensure they are complying with the legal education scheme.

References:

Continuing professional development (CPD), Queensland Law Society, viewed 25 January 2019, www.qls.com.au/For_the_profession/Your_legal_career/Continuing_professional_development_CPD

CPD Requirements for Queensland lawyers, LawCPD, viewed 25 Janaury 2019, www.lawcpd.com.au/cpd-requirements-queensland-lawyers