For most of the years I ran a firm, continuing competence meant a course booked late because the year was running out, and the annual declaration on the practising certificate took under a minute to tick. The Solicitors Regulation Authority published its fourth annual assessment of that regime on 20 August 2026, and with an AI assistant now sitting in every fee earner's Word window, that minute looks like the weak point.
The numbers describe a profession the regulator broadly trusts. Competence-related reports rose from 2,720 in 2024 to 4,038 in 2025, holding steady at 23 per cent of everything reported, and most firms were found to have sound systems for keeping their solicitors up to standard. What the SRA did to test that is the part worth your attention.
What the regulator now looks at
The SRA reviewed 123 training records from criminal and civil practitioners across 66 firms. Almost every one held a record and kept it current. Almost half failed to explain how the learning need was identified and why it mattered, which is what turns a list of attended sessions into evidence of reflection. Where learning had been done, it clustered around technical legal knowledge.
The report also records a change in how the regulator weighs that evidence. It now assesses whether a solicitor is aware of and uses warning notices, guidance and the Statement of Solicitor Competence when planning their learning. Put that beside the calendar. The SRA warning notice on the use of AI landed on 17 August 2026, three days before this assessment, and it is the newest item your record is read against.
The assessment says nothing about artificial intelligence, and it does not need to. A practice that put a tool into drafting or research this year has changed how the work is done and what goes wrong in it, and neither change shows up in a record built around a webinar on procedural amendments.
What to write down before renewal
An hour fixes this. For each person using a tool, write down what changed in their work, what that exposed as a gap, what they did about it and whether it worked. The gap is rarely the software, which most people pick up in an afternoon. It is knowing when confident output is wrong, what may safely go into the prompt, and who checks before the work leaves the building.
Treat it as preparation rather than paperwork. The SRA has consulted on a rule requiring every solicitor to keep a record showing how learning needs were identified and addressed. Subject to the consultation feedback and approval by the Legal Services Board, it intends that rule to start with the 2027/28 practising year. The declaration is no formality either. In 2025, 606 solicitors told the SRA they had not met its requirements, and a solicitor who cannot confirm it faces a condition preventing unsupervised practice.
Before your next renewal, read the AI warning notice against what your people do each day, take the two or three learning needs it exposes, and put them in the record with the date and the reason they arose. Building the habit behind it is a separate job, and this one asks only that you can show the thinking.
The full report sits on the SRA website as its annual assessment of continuing competence 2026, which is open to read and asks nothing of you.
If your firm has adopted AI faster than its training record shows, we build the record and the learning behind it: start with a conversation.