Practising Certificate Renewal, and a Second Checklist for Your Career

Practising certificate renewal opened on 1 October and closes on 31 October. It is the one time a year almost every solicitor in the country logs in to mySRA and thinks about the regulator, even if only for ten minutes.

It also lands in an unusual year for the SRA. In September it published an independent review of how it handled the intervention into PM Law Group, and its chief executive said the SRA needs to move away from reacting after the event and relying on enforcement. It is also reviewing how it has complied with the Legal Services Board's directions after the Axiom Ince collapse.

The renewal checklist

I will keep this short, the SRA's own guidance is the place for detail.

• Log in to mySRA early and check your authenticator app works. The SRA has been reminding people about this one.
• If your firm renews for you, still check your own details are right.
• Do not leave it to the last week of October.

The other checklist

My angle is simple. The renewal form asks the regulator's questions. Once a year, it is worth asking your own. These are the ones I would ask if we were on the phone.

• Is there a body of work you deal with more often than not, or is the day a mixed bag? And is that the work you want to be known for in five years?
• When did you last check your pay against the wider market, beyond your own firm?
• Do you know your own numbers? Matters you run, what you bill and what you handle without supervision.
• Are you still learning, or have you been doing the same thing for a couple of years?
• How much do you know about your firm's finances and who owns it?

That last question

The last one is the question people skip. Lawyers run careful checks on clients and on the other side, and almost none on their own employer. The firm collapses of the last few years left staff dealing with closures they did not see coming.

There is no need to lose sleep over it. Just ask when you are interviewing. Who owns the firm, how long the compliance officers have been in post, how the firm is doing. A good firm will not mind the question.

The other view

Some will say this is a recruiter turning a regulatory deadline into a sales pitch. Fair enough, hands up. The questions are still worth asking whether you ever speak to me or not.

If you work through that list and a couple of the answers surprise you, when would you be free for a quick chat next week?

Sources

• SRA Update issue 154