Reflecting and identifying your competence requirements

Updated 9 August 2022

Reflecting on and learning from your practice is one of your competence requirements.

What reflection means

Reflection is thinking about the challenges and quality of your practice so you can meet your competence requirements. These are to:

• Accurately evaluate your strengths and weaknesses in relation to the demands of your work, and
• Identify the learning and development needs you need to address to maintain your competence and provide high standards of service.

There is a strong public interest in solicitors considering the quality of their practice. It helps them remain competent to carry out their role and provide a high standard of service.

When to reflect

You need to commit an appropriate amount of time to consider the quality of your practice. This can depend on things like:

• the nature of your practice
• developments in the areas of law you work in
• an employer’s requirements
• the requirements of a learning and development initiative you are taking part in.

Reflection should also be completed on a regular, ongoing basis so that you can identify learning and development needs as they arise.

This can be important when you have a need that presents an imminent risk to a member of the public. For example, how to effectively advise a client who has a vulnerability that you haven’t dealt with before. It would be better to recognise this before meeting them, through a process of ongoing reflection, so that you can take steps to address it.

You should also schedule time to reflect in more detail about specific areas of your practice, or as a whole, for example:

• after completing a case
• before meetings with your team, manager or supervisor
• as part of a formal appraisal or performance management process
• at other regular intervals (eg monthly or quarterly).

Reflection is also important when you evaluate the learning and development activities you have completed. Find out what this means in Record and evaluate.