Newsletter – October 2021

From the CEO

It’s that time of year! Early next month, you will receive an email with a link to your personalised application form for renewing your practising certificate. We are waiting to hear from the Legal Services Board about the Costs Lawyer practising fee for 2022, but in the meantime there are steps you can take to get ready to apply.

If you have changed jobs this year, or your email address has otherwise changed and you haven’t told us yet, please get in touch to update your contact details.

Make sure you have designated the CLSB as a “safe sender” in your email account. Even if you receive our newsletters, your email system might think that your renewal email is spam due to the information it contains. Instructions for how to add the CLSB to your safe senders list can be found on our website.

Unless you work in-house or for a firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), you will need to provide evidence of your professional indemnity insurance and your complaints procedure. You might like to request these from the relevant department within your organisation prior to starting your renewal application. You can check whether your firm is regulated by the SRA by searching the SRA’s online register.

You will also be asked to tell us about your CPD activities for the year, totalling at least 12 CPD points. If you haven’t completed all your CPD by the application deadline, don’t worry; CPD activities booked for November or December but not yet attended can be included in your CPD return as normal. There are some suggestions on our website if you’re still looking for free or low cost CPD opportunities.

New CPD Rules came into force on 1 January 2021. There are no longer any activity categories or caps, so there is much greater flexibility in how CPD requirements can be met, and all your CPD can be done online if you wish. Under the new rules, you also need to set CPD objectives for the year and keep a record of whether and how these objectives were met. We won’t ask you for all this information when you apply for a practising certificate, however you will need to provide this if you are chosen for audit.

If you have any questions about renewing your practising certificate, there are helpful FAQs on our website, or you can contact us at any time.

Finally, we will be running an abridged diversity survey this year that focuses on pay and earnings differences between men and women. All diversity data is anonymised and is not linked to your practising certificate application. It only takes three minutes to complete the survey, but it makes a huge difference to our ability to champion diversity within the profession, for everyone’s benefit. I’m very grateful to all Costs Lawyers who can give up a few minutes of their time to help out.

Kate Wellington

CEO

Regulatory News

What knowledge and skills do Costs Lawyers need?

We are currently consulting on a proposed new Competency Statement for Costs Lawyers. This will establish the knowledge and skills that a Costs Lawyer must possess at the point of qualifying into the profession. We would welcome feedback by 18 October from anyone interested in the training and qualification of Costs Lawyers, including employers, recent qualifiers, education providers, clients and other stakeholders.

The full Competency Statement can be found at Annex 1 to the consultation paper, which is available on our website. The consultation closes at 5pm on 18 October 2021. Responses can be sent to [email protected].

Lessons from the 2021 audit of complaints procedures

To improve the quality of Costs Lawyers’ complaints procedures, the CLSB carries out an annual audit as part of its wider supervision programme. In 2021, none of the 20 complaints procedures that we audited met all the requirements in the Guidance Note.

Common mistakes included out of date contact details for the CLSB or the Legal Ombudsman; missing information; confusing the role of the CLSB and ACL; and using out of date guidance. More information is available on our new webpage which you can use, in conjunction with the model complaints procedure in our Guidance Note, to ensure your complaints procedure meets the requirements.

Fair and transparent complaints procedures give your clients justified confidence that any complaints will be handled appropriately.

Sign up to NCSC’s Early Warning for cyber-attacks

Following a recent ransomware attack on a barristers’ chambers and a large phishing scam affecting solicitors, we encourage all Costs Lawyers to sign up to the National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC’s) Early Warning scheme.

Early Warning is a free NCSC service designed to inform your organisation of potential cyber-attacks on your network, as soon as possible. The service uses a variety of information feeds from the NCSC’s trusted public, commercial and closed sources. You can sign up on the NCSC website.

More information on how to defend yourself against malware and ransomware attacks can be found here.

Follow us on Linkedin

As part of our efforts to communicate regulatory and other news to Costs Lawyers CLSB is now on Linkedin. Follow us to keep up with issues affecting the profession and your regulatory obligations.

Spotlight on… innovation in legal services

In this newsletter, we turn our spotlight on the importance of innovation. The CLSB’s Chair, David Heath CBE, considers innovation in the legal sector and explains how a new CLSB project fits into the wider landscape.

“In July, the government announced new plans to put the UK at the forefront of the global innovation race. It’s easy to see how this vision applies to certain parts of our economy. In the current climate, organisations like pharmaceutical companies and tech giants immediately come to mind as leaders in innovation. But what about lawyers? Is innovation for us? And if so, what does that look like?”

Read More

Up and Coming…

Expect more from us shortly on:

  • Confirmation of the 2022 practising fee
  • New guidance on pro bono work
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