Practising Certificates

It's that time of year when all solicitors who want to remain solicitors have to renew their Practising Certificates if they want to continue to practise as a solicitor. There's something labyrinthine about the technical details, but you can't actually describe yourself as a "solicitor" unless you have a current practising certificate. In fact, it is a criminal offence to describe yourself as a "solicitor" if you are not one. You might be able to call yourself a lawyer, but not all lawyers are necessarily solicitors.

You can always check whether someone is a solicitor by looking at the Law Society's online database. Just checked myself, and there are actually five Mark Lloyds and you can find my results here. You can find Penny Froggatt's here. Although, there isn't a great deal of information in those results, they do confirm that we are both solicitors holding current Practising Certificates - at least until 31 October 2006. The one interesting bit of information is "the date of admission" which is the  date each solicitor was formally admitted so you can always get an idea how long someone has been practising and how experienced they might be.

For the record, the fee to renew each solicitor's practising certificate this year is £950 plus £500 which represents a contribution to the Compensation Fund. The Compensation Fund is the sum held to compensate clients who lose money held by solicitors' in a "Client Account" i.e. a bank account in which the solicitor holds money on trust for his or her client. I am explaining this as a matter of interest, and make no particular comment on the amounts. It's simply one of the costs of doing business as solicitors. Interestingly, in July 2005, there were 100,938 solicitors holding practising certificates which does make you wonder what the Law Society does with all the money.

Comments

[Richard S]

I work for the Law Society. You'll be happy to know that most of it goes towards sorting out the naughty solicitors (Read: 'abandonment of practice' + 'me in a bad mood' = 'compliance directorate' You will get the best results if you ring up to get things changed.

And make sure you keep section 84 compliant.