The rise of reflective legal practice

It is 10 years this year since the old Continued Professional Development (CPD) regime was changed from the system of fixed CPD hours to a requirement for solicitors to reflect on their practice to maintain their competence. In April 2026, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) launched a consultation on proposals aimed at strengthening their continuing competence approach, in part due to evidence from their monitoring work showing that some solicitors cannot demonstrate meaningful and regular reflection. So what does meaningful and regular reflection look like? Do you know how to reflect competently?

The Requirement to Reflect

The SRA expects solicitors to regularly reflect on all aspects of their practice and address any identified learning and development needs. Solicitors must declare when they renew their practising certificate that they have reflected on their practice and addressed those identified needs. The SRA are not the only regulatory body globally to require reflection as part of a solicitor’s ongoing competence. The Victorian Legal Services Board, for example, requires their Early Career Lawyers to reflect on their capability development as part of their Capability Framework. 

Reflection therefore needs to be a core part of a solicitor’s job, but why has the SRA placed such emphasis on this in the last 10 years?

Benefits of Reflection

Graham Gibbs, who has written extensively on reflection, emphasises that experience alone does not produce competence. We need to reflect on an experience to generate concepts which allow new situations to be tackled effectively.

The SRA highlights the benefits of using reflection to evaluate strengths and weaknesses and identify learning and development needs. These needs can be technical skills, such as clearer drafting, or soft skills, such as adaptability in a changing world, and can highlight a lack of knowledge in a particular area, for example an awareness of updated regulatory or professional duties. Reflection can help solicitors to detect cognitive biases, for example overconfidence after a winning a case, or risk aversion after a loss. It can also strengthen ethical decision-making, an area which the SRA is placing much focus on in its consultation on continuing competence.

Aside from the mandatory requirement to do this from the SRA, a study by the Harvard Business School has shown a 25% improvement in job performance for employees who reflect and share those reflections. So the benefits are clear, but how do you go about doing this? Most practising solicitors nowadays have not been taught to do this in an educational setting, although this is starting to change so arguably the next generation of lawyers may be better at this.

How to Reflect

The SRA provides a framework for reflection of the What? So What? Now What? model, which is credited to Driscoll. However, there is a more detailed model that is commonly used for reflective practice, which is the Gibbs model of reflection. In summary, this model requires you to describe the experience that you are reflecting on and consider how you felt during the experience. It then requires an honest evaluation of the experience, using that evaluation to move into an analysis of it. The conclusion stage will gather learning and that builds into an action plan for how to deal with a similar situation next time and try to improve on what has happened. This is, incidentally, the model that the Victorian Legal Services Board recommends. 

There are various questions that can be used as prompts at each stage:

• Description: Give a detailed description of the experience. What happened, when did it happen, where did it happen? Who was there? What did you/the other people do?
• Feelings: How did you feel before/during/after the experience? What do you think the other people were feeling?
• Evaluation: What went well? What did not go well? How did you react? How did others react? Did external factors contribute to the situation?
• Analysis: Why do you think things went well/badly? What was your contribution? Explain why things happened like that. What could have helped the situation?
• Conclusion: What did you learn from this experience? What went well that you would do again? What would you do differently next time? Have you identified any skill or knowledge gaps?
• Action Plan: What specific steps do you need to take next time? If a similar situation arose again, what would you do? Are there skills to develop, or training or resources you could access?

Arguably, using this model could lead to a more meaningful reflection, although, as the SRA acknowledges, there is no one single way to reflect.

The detail of the Gibbs model can be overwhelming for those who want to reflect frequently. For quicker reflection opportunities, there are other models of reflection including Schon’s reflection in action, which includes real-time reflection, and therefore adjustments made instantly, which could be utilised during meetings, negotiations etc. There is also the AAR (After Action Review) model created by the US military in the 1970s which asks four questions: what was supposed to happen? what actually happened? why were there differences? what will I do differently next time? Again this more direct model may allow for reflection more often. This does, however, beg a discussion of the question of when practising solicitors should be reflecting; what does regular, ongoing reflection, as required by the SRA, look like?

When to Reflect

The SRA’s guidance suggests numerous opportunities when reflection may be undertaken, such as before or after internal or external meetings, after a formal appraisal or performance management process, after completing a case or finishing working with a specific client and/or at regular intervals (e.g. monthly). However, if this is not built into a regular habit, then not only are the benefits of reflection lessened, but it is more likely to become an administrative burden and regulatory tick box exercise. Building this into a regular habit could be developed by reflecting at the following times, and in the following ways:

• Setting aside a small amount of time each day which is blocked out to reflect. There are numerous tools that can send an email prompt to remind you to reflect, or you can schedule a regular reminder in your calendar. Could this be done during your daily commute?
• Reflection should certainly be undertaken when completing a case or at the end of a deal as suggested by the SRA. This needs to be built into case-closing procedures. You may also need to reflect midway through a case for longer, more complicated transactions. If feedback is taken from clients, can you reflect on whether that feedback aligns with your own views on how the case or deal went?
• Can you build in a one-minute reflection at the end of a task or a meeting, with a couple of quick prompts for reflection to make this little and often?
• Could this be a team activity? Could you have peer reflective groups, such as a transaction team? This will arguably reduce personal blind spots.
• Could this be a Friday afternoon activity?

The frequency of reflection will also have an impact on the evidence that is produced of this reflection. It is not currently a regulatory requirement to document reflection, however the SRA’s proposed changes to the continuing competence regime would require records of how solicitors identified and addressed their learning and development needs and retention of those records for three years. The SRA provides written templates, including a learning and development template and a self-evaluation tool along with a written reflection template using the What? So What? Now What? model. It is therefore increasingly likely that some form of written reflection will be required, however there are other ways aside from a structured written reflection that can be used to build this into a habit. Many people will use a reflective journal to do this, and there are several guided journalling apps that are available. Some of these will allow you to journal using voice notes, photos or text and some use AI to prompt based on your mood and previous entries. Could you write a letter to yourself? Or record yourself on your phone via a voice note? An ability to build this into a habit may require more flexibility than a documented reflective analysis to fit this into a busy working day, which could then be used to build a more detailed structured written reflection as part of regulatory records.

Enhancement

Reflection is not an easy thing to do, especially for those who have not been trained in this skill. The following points will be important when trying to develop this competence:

• You need to look at situations, experiences etc from other people’s perspectives as well as your own.  The Gibbs framework detailed above requires you to do this because it helps to get a better personal reflection if you are looking at other views as well as your own.
• Once you are regularly reflecting and have built this into a habit, can you start to spot patterns from similar experiences? How are you behaving each time? How would you like to behave?
• It is important to acknowledge, as is done in the Gibbs framework, that there are external factors outside of your control that may have affected a situation. Whilst those factors may not be within our ability to control, did you control how you reacted to them?
• You must be honest with yourself. Reflection should not be used as self-justification. People find reflection very difficult to do; it is human nature not to want to admit our own failings. However it is difficult to gain anything valuable from reflection if you refuse to acknowledge where you need to improve. That said, reflection should not just focus on weaknesses; reflection can help you to build on your strengths and utilise capabilities in different ways.
• Emotions can often run high in situations. If you are reflecting immediately after an event, you can still be in a heightened emotional state which can affect your judgment. It is therefore useful to leave reflections for some time and then go back to them, because you will often find that you see things differently once you are in a calmer emotional state.
• If you are reflecting in written form, you should use the first person. This is not an objective piece of work; this is subjective and personal and therefore you should write in this manner.
• Ultimately, although all the stages of reflection are important, probably the most important part in terms of development is your action plan. This needs to be clear so you are taking the learning from the situation and the reflection and using it to improve yourself.

Conclusion

Reflection is a core skill that can be learnt, and improved, in the same way as any other skill.  With the SRA’s consultation proposing to enhance record keeping, this is a skill that solicitors need to be competent at, not only to ensure they are continually developing as lawyers but to ensure they are complying with their regulatory requirements. Reflection can be incredibly valuable, but without structure it risks slipping into navel-gazing, that is introspective without being instructive. Taking time to think about thinking will allow you to reap the rewards of this skill.