CPD / CLE
Track continuing professional development hours, ethics requirements, and compliance across your entire team.
Overview
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) — known as Continuing Legal Education (CLE) in some jurisdictions — is a regulatory requirement for practicing lawyers in virtually every jurisdiction. Failure to meet CPD requirements can result in practising certificate suspension, regulatory sanctions, and liability exposure. Despite the severity of non-compliance, many firms manage CPD obligations with spreadsheets or rely on individual attorneys to self-manage — creating compliance gaps that are only discovered at renewal time.
The CPD / CLE module gives the firm a centralised record of every CPD activity completed by every team member: the course, provider, credit hours, ethics hours, compliance period, and certificate number. Administrators see firm-wide compliance status at a glance; attorneys track their own progress toward annual requirements and receive alerts when compliance is at risk.
What a CPD Record Contains
Activity Title & Provider
The name of the course, seminar, conference, or self-study activity, and the organisation that delivered or accredited it.
Activity Type
The format of the CPD: Course, Seminar, Conference, Webinar, Self-Study, Writing/Publication, or Teaching. Different activity types may have different credit recognition rules in your jurisdiction.
Category
The content category: Substantive (practice area law), Ethics & Professional Responsibility, Practice Management, Technology, or Diversity & Inclusion. Many jurisdictions require a minimum number of ethics hours within the total.
Credit Hours & Ethics Hours
The total CPD credit hours awarded for the activity, and the subset of those hours that count specifically toward ethics requirements.
Compliance Period & Jurisdiction
The CPD compliance year or period this activity counts toward (e.g., "2025–2026") and the jurisdiction whose requirements are being met.
Certificate Number
The certificate or attendance confirmation number issued by the provider. Required for regulator audits.
Compliance Summary Stats
The summary panel at the top of the module shows four metrics:
Logging a CPD Activity
Open CPD / CLE
Click CPD / CLE in the sidebar under Firm Operations. Your own CPD records load by default. Administrators can switch between their own records and a firm-wide view using the user selector.
Click + Add Activity
The activity form opens. Complete all fields: title, provider, category (substantive, ethics, practice management, technology, etc.), activity type (course, seminar, webinar, self-study, etc.), and the number of credit hours awarded.
Enter hours breakdown
Enter total credit hours. If any portion counts specifically as ethics hours, enter those separately in the Ethics Hours field — they are a subset of total hours, not additional.
Set compliance period and jurisdiction
Select the compliance year this activity applies to and the jurisdiction whose CPD requirements are being met. Attorneys admitted in multiple jurisdictions can log the same activity against multiple jurisdiction records.
Enter certificate number
Enter the attendance confirmation or certificate number from the provider. This is required for regulatory audits. Upload a scanned copy of the certificate if available — attach it to the record using the file attachment field.
Save
Save the record. It appears in your CPD history and is included in the summary totals immediately.
CPD compliance discipline
- • Log CPD activities within 1 week of completion, not at the end of the year. Certificates are easier to find, memory of the details is fresh, and you avoid a year-end scramble to reconstruct records.
- • Check the ethics hours requirement for your jurisdiction before the start of each compliance year and track against it separately. Many attorneys meet their total hours requirement only to discover they are short on ethics hours at renewal time.
- • Keep certificate scans attached to the FRITH record. The regulator may audit any year's CPD records — having them attached to the record means you can produce them without hunting through email or filing cabinets.
- • Administrators should run a firm-wide CPD status report in October/November (or 60 days before jurisdiction renewal periods) so any team member who is behind can complete their hours before the deadline, not after.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does FRITH know my jurisdiction's specific CPD requirements?
FRITH tracks your CPD records and hours but does not enforce jurisdiction-specific rules automatically (minimums, carry-over rules, approved-provider lists). These vary significantly between jurisdictions and change regularly. Use FRITH to track your hours and ensure compliance against your own knowledge of the applicable requirements.
Can I export my CPD records for a regulator?
Yes. Click Export from the CPD module to download a CSV of all your CPD records, including activity titles, providers, credit hours, ethics hours, compliance periods, and certificate numbers. This is suitable for submission to most law society or bar association self-reporting portals.
Can administrators see the CPD status of all staff?
Yes. Administrators can switch the CPD module view to show all team members and filter by compliance period, jurisdiction, and status. This firm-wide view enables compliance monitoring and proactive intervention for team members who are falling behind.
What if I attended the same conference across two compliance periods?
Create two separate CPD records, each noting the portion of hours applicable to each compliance period. For example, a 2-day conference that spans the year-end boundary: Day 1 goes to the ending compliance year, Day 2 to the new year. Note this in the record's notes field for audit clarity.