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Overcoming misunderstandings with recordings for CPD points
How to claim points with recorded sessions is perhaps the most misunderstood rule for a lawyer’s CPD. So, what do you need to know?
Lawyers Weekly
Speaking on The Lawyers Weekly Show, in an episode to be released next week, Legalwise Seminars founder Jacquelyn Simon spoke with host Jerome Doraisamy about what constitutes best practice in accruing points for continuing professional development (CPD).
Part of the reason for misunderstanding, she detailed, is that online sessions are “so common now” and convenient: “You can change your mind; you can be anywhere.”
Nonetheless, she stressed, there are rules around the engagement with and ultimate use of those recordings.
“You’ll often find that you’ll go to do a program and you no longer can attend. [That’s] not a problem, they’ll give you the recording. But the problem is – and what you really have to watch out for – the recording doesn’t give you the same points or the rules in relation to recordings,” she explained.
Claiming points in recordings isn’t the same as any other type of CPD, Ms Simon continued. As a result, one must be prudent in how they’re utilising such content.
“You have to balance the fact that you can rewatch a recording, you can take notes from the recording, but it is capped. So, we have caps in all states in Australia, except for Queensland, [where you can] watch as many recordings as you want, and you can just take things and watch them,” Ms Simon said.
“That goes all the way down to Western Australia, where you can only watch four hours of recordings, or [accrue] four points through watching a non-interactive recording, and the rest you must get as an interactive. In all the other states, it’s five points.”
This is what causes the most confusion for practitioners across the board, Ms Simon surmised, as lawyers come to the provider noting they have completed the requisite hours, but then as the 31 March deadline approaches, they find that they are not in a position to claim the needed points.
“So you really have to be careful in noting if you’re just watching a non-interactive recording,” she warned.
The conversation follows Ms Simon’s recent Q&A with Lawyers Weekly, in which she proclaimed that Legalwise is aiming to be “the Netflix of legal content”.
Elsewhere, the conversation fleshed out that while some lawyers may prefer to undertake their annual professional development in person, it is possible for practitioners to accrue all the requisite points online, Ms Simon said.
“You just have to watch what you’re doing and how much of what you do,” she noted.
“We find 60 per cent to 70 per cent of all our delegates are coming online, whereas before COVID-19, most people got up, they went into a room to get their CPD [points]. These days, it’s exactly the opposite.”
The difference in the rules is all about interactivity, Ms Simon explained, noting that if you can interact with the materials, then it’s considered an interactive program, and the physical location isn’t important.
At Legalwise, she outlined, all programs are web-streamed, which the provider calls “live online”.
“So, [just as if] it were in the room, you’ve got to be there, you can speak to the speaker, you can ask questions of the speaker, you log in, everybody’s logging in at exactly the same time,” she said.
“The other way that people are doing it is by question and answer. So, you watch a video, or you read something, you answer the questions, and then you can get all your points – and they’re all uncapped.”
