Newsletter – October 2022

From the CEO

In early November you will receive your personalised application form for renewing your practising certificate. We’ve had to make a few changes this year, to comply with new requirements from the Legal Services Board. The Register of Costs Lawyers will also look a bit different in 2023. Here’s a rundown of what you need to know.

Renewing your practising certificate

You can start preparing now by ensuring you have all the information you need to hand. In particular:

  • You need to tell us about your CPD activities in 2022, including events you have booked but not yet attended at the point of application. There is plenty of time left if you haven’t already attained the minimum 12 points. Remember that you are also required to keep a written record of your CPD objectives for the year, and an evaluation of whether and how these were met; we will request this document for all Costs Lawyers selected for audit.
  • Unless you work in-house or for a firm regulated by the SRA, you will need to provide evidence of both your professional indemnity insurance and your complaints procedure. You may need to request these documents from the relevant department within your organisation prior to starting your renewal application.
  • If you need a particular reference on the invoice for your practising certificate fee, you must enter this in your application.

We have worked hard to ensure the application form is as easy as possible to understand and complete. The vast majority of questions are the same as last year, and, where appropriate, will be pre-populated with information we already hold for you. If you have any questions about renewing your practising certificate, there are FAQs on our website that you might find helpful.

Changes to the Register of Costs Lawyers

The Legal Services Board published its Statement of policy on empowering consumers, with which all legal regulators must comply, in April 2022. We need to make changes to the Register of Costs Lawyers to comply with the new requirements. The Register must now show:

  • Contact details for your organisation. It will no longer be possible to choose to have these details omitted, other than in exceptional circumstances.
  • The regulatory status of the organisation in which you practise.
  • Your practice area(s).
  • Any published disciplinary and enforcement records, including sanctions.
  • Any published decisions made by the Legal Ombudsman relating to complaints about you.

The new Register – which has the same look and feel as the current one, but with the additional information available in an expandable section – will go live in January 2023. We are very grateful to the Costs Lawyers on our Advisory Panel who provided helpful feedback on a test version of the new Register earlier this year.

Kate Wellington

CEO

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