TL;DR

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has opened an eight-week consultation on revising two frameworks: its Statement of Solicitor Competence, and the functioning legal knowledge (FLK) tested in the Solicitors Qualifying Examination. Announced by the regulator on Thursday 8 October, the proposals would make technology and AI an explicit part of what competent practice means. Responses close on 3 December.

What would change

The competence statement sets the standards every solicitor must meet throughout their career, while the FLK defines the core legal rules and principles SQE candidates must know and apply. The SRA says technology, new delivery models and emerging risks are reshaping the profession, so the framework needs updating to keep pace.

According to the consultation, as reported by Today’s Family Lawyer, stakeholders showed “strong consensus” that the statement should reflect technology, including AI, as it bears on both the ethical and the technical sides of a solicitor’s work. Other areas in line for revision are ethics and professional conduct, supervision, and wellbeing, while the FLK changes would clarify some material and add or cut other topics.

Nearly 150 practitioners, firms, academics, educators and representative groups fed into the proposals. Beth Black, who leads education and training at the SRA, said the public should be confident that solicitors “have the knowledge, skills and professional judgement to provide a competent service”.

How it fits with earlier reforms

The competence statement dates from April 2015, when it replaced the old requirement for 16 hours of continuing professional development a year. In April this year the SRA consulted separately on strengthening its continuing competence approach, including options for recording learning needs, compulsory annual ethics training and a power to require training where concerns arise.

The final versions are due out in April 2027, coming into force that September.

Looking forward

The consultation arrived a day before the senior judiciary set out how judges may use AI, insisting that a human remains accountable for every output. In our view, writing AI into the competence statement would turn responsible AI use from good practice into a professional obligation that the SRA can assess. For law firms, that would make training and supervision of AI-assisted work a compliance question rather than an optional investment. Firms should respond before 3 December, particularly on how supervision duties apply when junior staff rely on AI tools.