Continuing professional development

The case, par excellence of the box-ticking culture than modern risk management has become.

Once upon a time, somewhere, someone in a self-regulating professional trade body conceived the worry that by the daily practice of one’s professional calling in a live environment, an attorney might grow stale, out of touch and dangerously unlearned in the ways of her calling. A counter-intuitive idea, but there you have it: it is a good thing for people to challenge orthodoxy.

So was born “continuing professional development”, a stipulation whereby solicitors must periodically re-educate themselves on germane issues. It is not greatly onerous — a few hours, spread over a year, is all you need — though across an entire profession that is no small demand on total capability. Law firms beheld a great marketing opportunity: a jaunty breakfast seminar for their in-house clients, followed by networking: a chance to renew acquaintances over a salmon bagel.

Make no mistake: free bacon sandwiches are great. Most jobbing solicitors need no more incentive than that. If the room is suitably large and dark there is scope for a few winks. (Freshfields London has an excellently dingy auditorium, by the way, at the back of which one can snooze quite unobserved). In brighter forums, it is a chance to catch up on Twitter, LinkedIn or follow the cricket. In all other ways it is a total waste of time.

Of course, there is no practical means of ensuring a CPD hour is remotely vocational, useful, or relevant, much less that one has spent any part of the hour actually paying attention to it.

Anyone who claims to enjoy hearing an aged solicitor mumble into his beard for an hour about the transaction reporting regime under MiFID 2 in front of a text-heavy PowerPoint presentation is such a liar as to call into question her fitness and properness to be a solicitor of the supreme court of England and Wales. Heaven forbid you should take anything on board.