Legal CPD Requirements for Family Lawyers 2026

Legal CPD Requirements for Solicitors

Solicitors must complete their annual CPD requirement as a condition of holding a practising certificate, subject to applicable exemptions and proportional reductions. Continuing professional development is structured learning that extends knowledge or skills relevant to legal practice. Ordinary work on a client file does not become CPD because you learn something while doing it.

In NSW and Victoria, the standard requirement is 10 units, with at least one unit in each field below. The remaining six units can cover qualifying topics relevant to your practice.

The Uniform Solicitors CPD Rules govern these requirements. The Victorian regulator’s obligations guide explains how they apply to activity formats.

The CPD year has its own completion deadline. Use the NSW CPD period and compliance guidance or Victoria’s obligations guide to identify the applicable period.

Claim legal CPD points in your own record after completing the activity. Exclude breaks from the learning time claimed. Allocate the activity to its relevant field. Declare compliance when renewing your practising certificate. A provider’s attendance certificate supports the declaration, but responsibility for a valid claim remains yours.

CPD Requirements in NSW, Victoria and Other States

Every state and territory has a standard 10-unit annual requirement, but mandatory categories and administration differ. The following comparison covers solicitors with full-year obligations. Partial-year certificates and exemptions can change the total.

NSW, Victoria, Queensland, WA, SA, the ACT and NT use the same annual CPD period. Tasmania’s period starts and ends one month later. The linked regulator pages give the exact boundaries and filing deadlines. Those periods also differ from the practising certificate year, so renewal time is not extra time to complete learning.

WA uses the Uniform Rules but also administers activity accreditation through its CPD management system. Accredited providers upload attendance. In NSW, the Law Society expressly says it does not accredit CPD activities. A course marketed across Australia therefore needs a jurisdiction-specific claim assessment.

Law society CPD can mean either the compliance scheme or courses sold by a professional association. In NSW and Queensland, the law societies administer solicitor compliance as well as supplying activities. In WA, the Legal Practice Board administers compliance and accreditation. The Law Society of WA supplies training. South Australia’s Law Society administers the council’s scheme and also supplies courses.

Buying a society’s course does not remove your responsibility to meet the applicable rules.

Extra CPD for Accredited Family Law Specialists

Specialist accreditation requires learning in family law alongside your practising certificate obligations. The additional amount depends on the scheme that accredits you.

NSW’s specialist year has a different boundary from its practising certificate CPD year. Keep separate totals and periods. Newly accredited specialists also have first-year provisions, so apply the scheme’s initial requirement before using the ongoing total.

Falling short can prevent specialist renewal and lead to loss of accreditation. NSW’s guide permits applications for extension or discretion and provides for cancellation when renewal is not completed. Queensland requires annual re-accreditation and asks specialists to notify the Society once outstanding CPD is completed. Apply for the relevant scheme relief promptly rather than assuming your practising certificate declaration also renews your specialist status.

Financial Evidence Training That Counts as CPD

Financial evidence training can qualify when it develops legal knowledge or practical skills relevant to your family law work. The subject and learning outcome decide the field. A bank-statement session teaching evidentiary analysis can be professional skills CPD. A session examining the legal treatment of disputed expenditure can be substantive law CPD.

These are examples of session designs, not advertised courses:

• A workshop compares statement transactions with a disputed expenditure schedule, then applies the authorities on disputed expenditure and add-backs.
• A seminar teaches how to brief a single forensic accounting expert, including the questions to ask and the expert witness duties the instructions must respect.
• A practical exercise tests a WA Form 13 financial statement against bank records. Participants identify unexplained differences and draft requests for supporting documents.

Form 13 is the WA family court financial statement. For matters elsewhere, use the financial statement required by that court. The learning task is to connect the declared figures with evidence, rather than treating every bank deposit as income.

Training on which divorce bank statements to request or working with a forensic accountant can support that skill. In practice, FinTrace saves hours of statement review by producing a searchable ledger and a findings report with direct statement references. Training can focus on using those outputs to prepare questions and instructions.

For a hypothetical 60-minute expert-briefing workshop, record one unit of professional skills if the entire hour qualifies under your rules. Keep the agenda and attendance evidence. Add a short learning note: “Drafted instructions identifying disputed transfers, supplied source statements and expert questions for a family law property matter.” Record specialist relevance separately where your scheme requires it.

Legal CPD Online, Webinars and Seminars

Legal CPD online can count, including live webinars and qualifying recorded learning. The distinction between participation and passive viewing affects the available units. Watching ten hours of recordings does not necessarily satisfy a ten-unit year.

The ACT CPD Guidelines expressly include an “audio/video/online presentation” among qualifying educational activities. Their content requirements still apply. NSW and Victoria permit private study of educational audio/visual material, capped at five units. Victoria treats learning with quizzes or other interaction differently from passive viewing.

WA requires at least five interactive units, including when all learning is online. Tasmania caps recordings at five points and treats real-time interactive webinars as attendance. SA and NT also cap passive recorded or audio/visual learning at five units. General reading or routine case research does not automatically qualify as a CPD activity.

Free legal CPD can include member courses. The Law Society of NSW’s contingency and succession planning course is described as free for members and claimable towards mandatory CPD. Membership is the condition, so free does not mean open to every practitioner.

Choose law society CPD programs by the field you still need, the permitted activity format and the syllabus. For family law CPD courses, distinguish a property-law update from a practical financial-evidence workshop. A family law CPD bundle or conference must still cover your empty mandatory fields. Bankruptcy webinars can help where insolvency affects a property matter, provided the learning is relevant to your practice. Annual practice-management CPD is separate from a qualification required for a principal role.

Legal Aid NSW’s professional development programme and the Family Law Section are other places to find relevant training. Assess each listing’s fee and eligibility before booking. A free community information session can have a different audience and purpose from professional legal CPD. For ethics learning on technology, consider a session addressing court rules on AI use rather than a general software demonstration.

Recording Units and Passing an Audit

A CPD audit asks you to substantiate completed activities and the units claimed. Keep the activity name, provider, completion date, format, learning time and mandatory field. Preserve attendance confirmations or completion certificates, together with the agenda and any material explaining the learning outcome.

NSW and Victoria require records for at least three years. Tasmania requires supporting evidence for at least two years. Keeping a three-year file is a practical common approach for those jurisdictions, but follow a longer applicable requirement or audit notice. WA practitioners must also ensure provider-uploaded points appear correctly in the Board’s system.

Your annual total must satisfy both the overall units and each mandatory field before your jurisdiction’s CPD year ends. Specialist learning must also meet its own period and subject minimum. A surplus in substantive law cannot cure an empty ethics field.

NSW and the ACT permit up to three qualifying surplus units to carry into the next year. Eligibility depends on when you complete them. Units counted for one year cannot also satisfy the next. Carry-over rules are jurisdiction-specific and do not replace a shortfall in the year already ended.

If you are short, disclose the shortfall accurately and use the applicable extension, exemption or rectification process. Queensland accepts extension applications before the period expires. Victoria can require a rectification plan and allows 90 days to complete missed learning. Continued failure can delay practising certificate renewal.

SA requires a declaration and rectification plan followed by confirmation of completion under its MCPD filing schedule. NT requires an annual certificate and, for a shortfall, later completion with a supplementary certificate under its compliance timetable. Tasmania can require a rectification plan within 21 days.

The legal CPD tracker can help you organise an activity record. Assess each activity against your regulator’s rules and retain the supporting evidence.

Before booking another session, total your eligible units by field and format. Then check your specialist total separately. Choose the learning that fills the actual shortfall and retain evidence of completion before making your compliance declaration.

Learning Suspicious Matter Reporting

Suspicious matter reporting training must teach you to recognise a reporting trigger and explain the facts behind a suspicion. For legal practices providing a regulated designated service, the course must address the reporting duties that apply to that service.

Use AUSTRAC’s suspicious matter reporting guidance to assess the syllabus. Look for instruction on reasonable grounds for suspicion, gathering customer and transaction facts, internal escalation and the applicable reporting timeframe. Confidentiality training must address tipping off and legal professional privilege. A useful exercise asks participants to distinguish an unusual transaction from facts supporting a reportable suspicion.

A professional course can add case discussions and feedback on a draft report. Reading AUSTRAC guidance supplies the regulator’s explanation, but reading alone does not automatically earn legal CPD units. Assess the course or study activity under your jurisdiction’s permitted formats and private-study limits. Allocate the field according to its actual content, such as ethics for confidentiality duties or professional skills for preparing a report.

AUSTRAC’s SMR form guide identifies a training environment for practising report completion. Use fictional information there. Keep evidence of the learning time and the session’s outcomes with your CPD record before claiming the units.