CPD Outline
The Lawyers and Conveyancers Act (Lawyers: Ongoing Legal Education - Continuing Professional Development) Rules 2013 (CPD Rules) requires lawyers who provide regulated services to complete 10 CPD hours each year. The CPD year runs from April to March.
Lawyers who hold practising certificates but do not provide regulated services are not required to complete any hours of CPD activities but will still need to prepare a continuing professional development plan and record (CPDPR) and file declarations to that effect. For more information on this, refer to the New Zealand Law Society's website.
At the end of the CPD year, lawyers must declare that they have completed their CPDPR and that they have completed the minimum CPD hours (or that they do not provide regulated services). It is important to keep track of your CPD and complete a CPDPR. The Regulator – the Law Society – may opt to audit any lawyer’s compliance with the CPD Rules. It is intended that the audit process is supportive and non-punitive. However, false declarations of compliance will be reported to a lawyers standards committee.
What activities count towards CPD?
The CPD activities undertaken must be within the bounds of the CPDPR developed by the practitioner. For a list of the types of activity and the rules around them, please refer to the regulator’s website. There are several limitations on what can and cannot be included as a CPD activity. Of note is the requirement that there be an element of feedback or interactivity.
This is relevant to recorded material. A recording without interactivity is not considered eligible. The NZBA satisfies the interactivity requirement for its recorded webinars/on demand product. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Keeping track of CPD Activities
The NZBA keeps track of attendance at our live CPD webinars and loads them against your account. This is to help you keep track of your activities and to update your CPDPR. Along with date and hours, some potential learning objectives that may or may not apply to you and which might help with completing your CPDPR.
To view your NZBA CPD activities:
- Log in and visit your profile on our member portal.
- Navigate to the CPD Tab.
- Click on View CPD entries.
If you have ordered an on-demand product, you will need to add this to your profile yourself. To manually add your own CPD to the NZBA record, follow these steps.